Giving Your Boat Some Legs

As many cruising sailors know, one drawback of a typical single-keeled monohull sailboat is that it will not stand upright on its own when you intentionally take the bottom on a falling tide. During the 22 years that I've owned my 28-foot Pearson Triton, Atom, I have often looked for a practical method of standing her upright when drying out between tides to clean or paint the hull, or simply to make repairs below the waterline.

Most of the time I have made do by careening, which is to let the boat lay over on its side as the tide drops and, if necessary, heeling her over even further by hauling on a halyard connected to a secure point on shore. But this means that only one side of the boat is accessible at a time. Safe careening requires a firm, smooth shoreline, such as a sloping sandy beach. Even so, the hull is vulnerable to damage from pounding against the bottom if an unexpected swell or wake from a passing boat should arrive. It is also extremely uncomfortable to live on the boat while it's laid over at a crazy angle. And getting up in the middle of the night at high tide to move the boat out or to turn it onto the other side is no fun either.

While in Madagascar, I even experimented by standing Atom bow-on to the beach with an anchor set out to each side connected to halyards at the top of the mast. This system sounded fine in theory, and may even have worked if I had not upset the balance by stepping off the side of the boat, causing one of the anchors to move slightly from the increased load. Moving in slow motion, Atom rolled gracefully and unstoppably over on her side. Fortunately, the only real damage done was to the skipper's pride, as witnessed by a group of curious local fishermen who gathered around.

But in all my voyaging, I have rarely found a quayside or dock suitable to lean against for drying out. The alternative, of course, is to haul out at a marina. Again, these facilities are not always available when and where I need them and the costs and hassles involved are not justified by the kind of minor jobs I often need to do.

While on that six-month cruise around Madagascar a few years ago, I began to seriously consider designing some type of dry-out legs. Besides keeping the boat upright for maintenance work, I wanted a method where I could enter shallow coves and tidal rivers at high tide, drop my anchor, set up the legs and let Atom look after herself as the waters receded. Some European sailors who keep their boats on moorings where huge tides turn the bays and estuaries into narrow channels and vast mud flats use what they call dry-out legs. However, the only types of legs I had seen in use were bulky and difficult to stow. Most of them lacked any height adjustment and I didn't care for the way they were attached to the hull, requiring special fittings and reinforcements.