Lots of places we have sailed have sea grasses floating on top of the water that catch on the daggerboards and rudders. This is especially true of small inland lakes in the Midwest in late summer, but it is also a problem on Biscayne Bay in Miami. On a two-person boat, it is usually the crew's job to keep making the rounds of the boat, raising and lowering daggerboards and rudders to free them of seaweed during a race.

My question is, what do you do if you are a singlehander and have all those foils to keep clearing constantly? Does anybody have an answer to this?

I read something in the Laser Newsletter about this, because they have the same problem. Apparently, some people were trying spraying their daggerboard and rudder with McLube to see if weeds would slide off better, but the editor said he tried it for half of the races in one regatta and he could not see any difference.

Laser sailors also do some spectacular rolls one way or the other to dump the weeds, but it doesn't sound feasible for catamarans.

Another thing Laser have tried is sailing with their rudders **** up more so weeds will slide off, but this is not legal for those boats except in shallow water, because there is some evidence that tilting the rudders up more makes the boats go faster.

For catamarans someone made the not serious suggestion that the fronts of the foils could be made razor-sharp so they just cut through the grass -- hmmm, and anything else they might come in contact with, like a crew member falling off the boat.

Anyway, what do you singlehanders do about the grass problem?