GL: Mud berth

[LRZeitlin at aol.com]

Whether a boat will live long and prosper in a freezing mud berth depends 
largely on the shape of the hull. Boats with convex underbodies do well. Boats 
with concave or flat bottoms or sides do less well. Naval architects have 
designed boats which were intended to survive frozen in the ice. Arctic and 
Antarctic explorers whose boats were lost, simply chose the wrong sort of craft. The 
most notable boat designed for freezing conditions was Colin Archer's FRAM, the 
vessel used by Nansen to explore the North Polar regions and by Amundsen to 
go to the South Pole. The section drawings showed almost a semi-circular bottom 
with few protrusions. Freezing ice could not gain a grip on the hull and 
simply forced it upward, just like the flower bulbs that Dennis Bruckel mentions. 
More modern examples are the Tylercraft sailboat hulls. Advertisements touted 
their ability to be frozen in the ice without damage.

A boat beached in mud will not sink as far as it does in water. I would be 
surprised if Tug 44 went down more than a few inches. Sheerlegs and a few 
railroad ties placed crosswise under the keel should be more than adequate to 
support the weight. Frost heaving is less of a problem above Albany than it would be 
further south in the Hudson Valley. The average midwinter temperature stays 
below freezing most of the time. Further south, say around Poughkeepsie, the 
average temperature is about 32 degrees F. This means that snow and the first 
couple of inches of mud thaw during the day, then freeze up at night. Concrete 
sidewalks buckle under these conditions. I'm not sure what it would do to the 
stability of a mud berth. But farther north it should be OK.

The best advice is to check around and get local old timer's advice. With few 
exceptions for boaters from upstate NY, Vermont, Maine and Minnesota, most 
members of the Loop list have not had much recent experience with long, cold 
winters. 

Larry Z


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