"root" wrote in message
news
My 28ft bilge keeler bounces around a good deal when the tide has moved to
be settling or lifting the boat.

Not only does it get damn noisy but it can get a bit frightening when wind
& wave combine to cause it to pitch up on one keel. But thats not my main
worry, I'm more curious to learn from folk who permanently moor in the
shallows and effectively have their boat on the dry once or twice a day.

Does this long term bouncing about cause any strutural damage? I'm
thinking it cant be doing my radar dome any good either.

We had problems with 2 bilge keelers (Westerly Centaur & Berwick) on a
drying swing mooring, . In both cases, the keel stubs were damaged and had
to be reinforced. The estuary mooring we had at that time dried so far on
springs that by the time the boat floated, the tide was up to 2 or 3 kts and
the boat was dragged sideways over ridges on the sand bottom when swinging.
I doubt that any keels/hulls are designed for such repeated shock loads and
it's not unknown for keels to break off completely.

Graham.