I am just on the verge of hopefully buying a Super Seal 26.

I am intending to leave it on a drying estuary mooring in the Dee Estuary at West Kirby.

It is quite exposed and I am a little concerned about leaving the rudder in place due to the windage on the large blade especially if the wind was to move to the side of the boat.

First of all, has anyone got experience in similar situations and how easy is it to remove and reinstate the rudder to the boat.

Thank you

Jonathan

I don't think it practical to remove the rudder whenever leaving the boat ,or probably necessary.

The rudder is heavy and it would be very awkward to hold it in the right position and place the pivot bolt when hanging over the stern.

We have a drying mud berth ,obviously steadier than a swinging morning,but what we do to is to firstly use the uphaul to its limit and then to reduce its projection , make it very visible and make sure that it cannot drop we hoist it to the limit of its rotation ( 45 ish) by using a separate lassoed line tied to the pushpit.

If you are concerned about windage and the boat rotating then some people use a streamed bucket or similat stern drag to damp this down.But that is normally more of an issue when you have a lot of anchor rope 'scope' deployed for a lot of depth and large tidal range .

A heavier mooring riser or the simple addition of some chain to the riser would give drag to stop it wandering before it settled but I think it is the shallow hull profile and high freeboard that provides windage effect,rather than the rudder blade.The blade itself is not troubled by the wind.

Peter

Parker Seal 27 #131

One thing I'd add is that I don't lash the tiller with rope, just bungee, as I broke a tiller once when it was lashed. Either someone hit it, or one of the stern lines of my fore-and-aft mooring caught on the rudder.

But I agree with Peter, removing and replacing the rudder is not that quick.

We used to have a Super Seal and had to get her rudder off one winter when she was ashore - I don't remember now what we needed to have done. I do remember that the professional who did the work for us said he'd had great difficulty getting the rudder back into the stock, as it needed to be quite a tight fit to avoid lateral play. He may have had to include one or more shims - but from that experience, we would never have tried to remove the rudder while afloat. In fact, we never tried to remove it again while ashore! We now have a 275 and, like Peter, we leave the rudder up when she's on her mid-river mooring, with a lassoed line to hold it up high. We tie the lasso back to the rudder stock, to one of the bolts that go across the stock.

Gilliane

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Hi Jonathan, I have a Super Seal 26 which I keep on a full water mooring on my local river. As others have mentioned, it spins from side to side quite a bit and i have tried to combat this by leaving a couple of feet of keel down, but it hasn't helped so i just accept it. I did wake up one morning on the mooring very close to the neighboring boat as both boats had swung around and were facing aft to aft, but it was still six feet away so was never going to collide. It's a great boat by the way, I've only had my for one year but absolutely love it. Cheers, Nick.