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We pay at least £30 for each one publishedKeen to counteract excessive boat rocking before
a trip to the Scilly Isles, Peter Lyle constructs his own
fl opper-stopper with the aid of some scrap lead
J
ust occasionally,
the ‘perfect
anchorage’ may
turn out to be seriously uncomfortable.
This is usually when the current or
the wind makes the boat lie beam-on
to the swell, and as a result the boat
rocks excessively.
I’d heard this could sometimes be a
problem in the Isles of Scilly, so I decided
to build the ultimate fl opper-stopper in
preparation for a trip to the islands.
There are more designs of fl opper-
stopper than there are of mousetrap, but
most of them work on the same principle:
boat rocking is damped by moving some
sort of contraption up and down through
the water. People have tried buckets, traffi c
cones, drogues and, of course, pukka
fl opper-stoppers. I cut a 60cm square from
an old sheet of 12mm exterior plywood and
rounded off the corners. The bigger the
area of the fl opper-stopper the more drag it
will cause, but also the more diffi cult it will
be to store: 60cm square seemed about
right for my 11m (36ft) boat, and it also
fi tted fl at in the cockpit locker.
The device needed to be heavy enough
to sink, so I bought 4kg of lead from my
local scrap metal merchant (£6), melted this
in an old aluminium cooking pan using a
propane blowtorch and moulded a lead
ingot which I inserted into the plywood.
The fl opper-stopper needed to be rigid,
robust and waterproof, so having fi xed the
lead into a hole in the plywood with
glassfi bre, I encased it all with more
glassfi bre mat and gelcoat.
The fi nished contraption is suspended
from the end of the boom, which needs
to hauled out as far as possible, and
supported with the topping lift and a gybe
preventer. It should be lowered 2 or 3m
below the surface.
It works, too: our visit to The Scillies was
a comfortable one.Lead was melted in an old cooking pan...
...and formed into an ingot, inserted into the plywood
The lead was then fi xed in place with glassfi bre
Assembly encased in glassfi bre mat and gelcoat
It should be lowered 2-3m below the surface...The device hangs from the end of the boom...and it works a treatCOST
£The ultimate DIY
fl opper-stopper