Pontoon Boat & Deck Boat Forum

I hope I'm not crossing the line here, but I received a question that in reality I'm not really comfortable answering or responding to. I have absolutely O experience boating in tidal waters myself, though I realize at least some people here do. The poster's comment came from this posting here http://blog.pontoonhouseboatodyssey.com ... -boat.aspx. I'm going to cross-link to this thread hoping some of you will be good enough to suggest viable answers to the inquiry here or there.

erik calonius wrote:
I wanted to ask if anyone has anchored their pontoon boat in tidal waters, where, when the tide is out, the boat rests on the soft mud. Those are the conditions in coastal Carolina where we boat. Is resting on the mud until the tide returns harmful to the boat? (we have a Bennington 20.) Thanks!

I'm getting ready for my first outing for this boating season myself, and hopefully everyone here will have a wonderful and safe weekend on the water.

Never thought about this one before, so i dont know.
But im thinking if it was just evenly supported on soft mud, that would be fine.
BUT, how can you guarantee that? It might settle down on a big Sharp rock, and punch a hole in it....

Personally, I think that if youre in a spot where ALL the water actually goes away, then id get the boat out before that happened...

How about getting a set of sea legs to hold the toons up just high enough to keep them off the ground when the water goes down?

I agree with WaltF, if the area you are going boating in loses ALL WATER, then you should not be boating in that area !

Damn sounds like a Louisiana fresh water lake that has been visited by Salvania and the Louisiana wildlife. This is a fix for all problems is draw-down and when the water gets back to normal the problem will be gone.

I think I would not let my toon sit on the bottom in mud. Mud can suck your toons down and hold them like glue if it gets hot enough to dry up some of the mud then concrete. I would have a lift or get it out of the water.

Being a tidal boater, I agree this is a very bad idea for the reason Walt mentioned. There is always a rock in that mud, the risk of a puncture would make me wary of doing this. If it's saltwater AND tidal, you also have oyster shells and barnacles which are sharp as hell.

I can add that tidal water can have some undesirable possibilities to contend with. Last May we spent time on a canal in Navarre Beach, Florida. I thought I had taken some good precautions to estimate the tides effect on how the boat would behave when tied up. What I did not take into account was the barnacle covered old rusty tire rim stuck in the sand. Thankfully, when the boat came to rest on it, it was with the thick V-rail along the bottom and not the thin skin.

http://i355.photobucket.com/albums/r472 ... SC0145.jpg

I live on the Gulf of Mexico in the Tampa Bay area. It is tidal here. I had my old pontoon boat in the soft mud for six years and never had a problem (I've never owned a trailer). There are no rocks where I live. I did have the boat bottom painted and I took it out once a year or year and a half and scraped off any barnacles and had the boat re-bottom painted (I recently bought a new pontoon boat as my 1995 Lowe was at the end of its life). I never had a problem with the pontoons leaking or taking on water. The boat floated when the tide came in and sat in the soft mud when the tide went out. I use the boat to go to sand bars and islands near my house. I also would take a sponge with a rough edge and just go over the pontoons when it is floating in the water and try and keep them clean and remove any build up of barnacles. I will tell you that I never had a barnacle cause any break or tear in the pontoons. I also bought a new Fiesta boat because they are made here on the West Coast and they have a slighter thicker pontoon. So, from my personal experience of having a boat in the soft mud for six years, it did not cause damage or problems, but you need to make sure you take the boat out once a year and clean the pontoons and re-bottom paint it.