Another "trick" for beach cat cruising

Posted By: Tom T. House
Date: 10/30/06 10:07a.m.

Report: outside forum guidelines

In Response To: thanks again - great board (spike)

Here's another "trick" or two you may wish to consider when using a beach cat for boat camping. Also remember how high and low tide works or you may find the water is floating your boat as you sleep. As you may know, the Sea of Cortez has reversing tides, so when you anchor, the anchor often times comes out as the tide reverses. Also at some times and in some locations the difference between high and low tide can be as much as 27 vertical feet and that translates to lots of beach visible and drying out during low tide and lots of beach being covered with water at high tide. As a result, at some times I've set up a temporary mooring and left my beach cat in the water after beaching it only long enough to off load or on load gear for camping. At other times I've drug the boat onto the beach, for the night. To manage the action of reversing tides, for a temp mooring to secure the boat out in the water our mooring system was two small folding anchors, one each, attached to opposite end of a fifty foot piece of poly rope. This way, at least one of the anchors is always pulling directly against the tide, on that end of the anchor rode that is tight. I liked the poly because it is cheap and it floats and by floating it abraids less as the boat swung here and there during the time it was on the mooring. We usually snorkeled to set the anchors, making sure they were securely wedged in rock structure....or well dug in if in a sandy bottom. To keep the boat from tripping on the floating anchor line, we also then tied a 4 or 5 foot line into the center of the poly anchor rode so the boat can swing between the two anchors on that line. A weight at the bottom of that 4 or five foot center line keeps the middle of the mooning line under water sufficient to clear our boat's keels. That 4 or 5 foot center line is tied to one hull of our beachcat, just behind the boat's forestay bridle, so the knot is against the boat's keel rather than gains the boat's deck. This attachment point works much better than attaching it to the boat's mast base or main beam and allows the boat to swing better, sooner and more decisively, when wind and/or currents change. This weight can be anything...but since weight is a concern while sailing, we used a life jacket as our mooring float and attached a mesh bag, partially filled with rocks on the under water end of our mooring line's middle to keep it clear of our boats keel(s) and made sure our rudders were up. Another method we used was to simply beach the boat, for beach camping at night. Using brute strength is one way to drag the boat up the beach...but we soon found our backs and boat's keels were taking a beating on these trips...due to the boat's wieght and the abrasion of sand and rocks that litter many of the beaches we visited. My solution was to take two lengths of plastic ABS pipe...each length being a foot longer than the beam of my beachcat. Make sure you get different diameter ABS pipe for each length, so one will "store" inside the other. I use caps on the end of the bigger pipe and make sure one end-cap is glued and the other is drilled and secured with a removable (but secure) pin. We found the constant wave action will cause the inner tube to beat ever so slightly, but continuously, against the end cap. The eventual outcome will be for the cap to loosen and you will lose the inner tube overboard and not know it until you get to your next beach camp site. Anyway, these tubes are great for rolling the boat up and down beaches to launch or retrieve the boat. When the beach is smooth and firm, the tubes will roll. When the beach is soft sand or littered with rocks or what-not, the tubes will stay put and the boat will glide across the tubes smooth surface. In either case, we pushed or pulled the boat on the tubes, until one of the tubes exited out the boat's stern, then we would carry that tube from the stern to the boat's bow and push or pull again. That really works well for us on all types of beaches. For the longest time I carried these tubes directly under the tramp in the boat's center, and we never knew it was there while sailing.... including the time I lost them due to the motion of the boat, a poor job of lashing them to the tramp's under-side and Murphy's Law that says anything that can work loose will work loose ... (By the way inside the tube is also a great place to stow fishing poles, tent poles, etc.) Any way, after losing the tubes once, I now usually carried the tube like a spinnaker pole, attached at one end to the base of my mast (via a lanyard passed through a drilled hole in the tube and the other end of the tube is attached to my boat's bridle, under the forestay, again via a lanyard passed through a hole drilled in tube at a convenient location. Located like a spinnaker pole, I can see it and know if it is working loose. You may also wish to note, if weight is a big issue, using only one 1 1/2 inch diameter tube, instead of two (one 1 1/2 and one 2 inch), works pretty good and still allows the boat to roll or slide on its surface, protecting your back and the boat's keels when launching or retrieving the boat across various kinds of beaches. Keep us posted on your preparation for your trip and how it all works out. As some of us get further into work and winter's cold, we really like hearing about the adventures others are planning and doing.