Blue Moon Sails Away: Heeling under bridges

As we learn more about Blue Moon and how she can take us places, we still had to worry about bridge heights in our area, especially at high tide. To solve the problem we decided to check into those bags that let you heel over (make your boat go sideways) to get the mast under bridges. We had seen videos on YouTube of a very tall-masted ship going under a too short bridge. Fascinating to watch but no where does it tell you how it's done or where to get that cool bag. So the research began. Turns out no one actually offers to sell a bag large enough to make our boat lean over. It took me several pages into the Os of Google to come to this conclusion. So next, I try to find a how-to-build your own bag site. Again, many pages into the Os with no luck. Fortunately, Sam, a very talented member of our yacht club had made a bag similar to what we needed and another friend, Linda, had actually been on board the boat, Pelliroas, when it had been used and had taken pictures of what the thing looked like. This led to more research into how much a gallon of salt water weighs, how many degrees of heel is required (there is actually a web site for this one with graphics that move) to achieve inches of height off your air draft. Then David and I came up with a plan of what was needed and how to make the bag. Another friend, Theresa, cleared out her dining room so Linda, Theresa and I could lay out the material, mark seam lines and generally hash out construction details. I then used her heavy duty sewing machine to make it all form a reinforced bag. The first test showed that my seams were not water tight so off it came and lots of sealer was added. We tested again, better but not good enough so more sealing. Finally we achieved an acceptable degree of leak and we actually pulled off a 13 degree of lean giving us about a foot off our mast height, the most we would ever need so it was deemed a success!

How did we fill the bag and make the boat lean, you ask. Good question. First we had to add a spinnaker pole to the front of our mainmast. This is so we can lift the bag high enough out of the water and get it far enough out to achieve the greatest angle of heel. All of this was a weeks long process in and of itself. Then with Linda's help, we had to learn how best to deploy and secure the bag so it didn't fly all over the place. On Pelli, they had several crew members who could winch their bag out of the water enough to make it work. We wanted to make it work with just the two of us and we just didn't have the combined strength so we opted with filling the bag from the top. Happily, Blue Moon comes with a wash-down pump to clean a dirty anchor. I'm sure the designers did not foresee our intended use. After a few more trial runs, we were ready for the Brooks Bridge. The pictures were taken by our friend Eric from on top of the bridge. Once we made the complete trip to Pensacola, there was great rejoicing for sure!!! It really is good to have smart, generous friends!