Another Maine story...our sailboat was a three masted staysail schooner (designed and built by my hubby)
We needed to clean the bottom as we'd been cruising for a while and it was dirty with moss and barnacles, 53' x 6' x2 is a lot of bottom and we couldn't afford to haul it. Maine has a huge tidal drop so we decided to beach her and scrub it ourselves.
So we motored up to the head of Soames Sound and dropped anchor close to shore. With three masts we had 10 halyards and sheets available so we took three halyards off one side, joined them together and tied off to a small public dock...three halyards off the other side and tied to a tree.
In effect the boat was bow in to the shore and supported on either side by halyards from the tops of the masts.
As the tide went out we adjusted the tension on the halyards, she settled on her keel and we kept her upright with the halyards. The tide left her 100% high and dry, out came the scrubbing brushes and buckets and we got to work.
Soon we started to notice a stream of cars and pickups coming by for a look, people pointing and gesticulating...we stopped for a moment to see what the fuss was and realized it was us...the tops of the masts were hidden in fog and no-one could see the supporting halyards, all they could see was a big ass sailboat sitting high and dry on its keel apparently completely unsupported with people underneath scrubbing away!!! I have a picture somewhere...
The other fun things wasn't he world famous cruising sailors and authors Hal and Margaret Roth were up there too...my hubby and they had met years ago and sailed about Bermuda...the came over and got stuck in and helped us with the scrubbing!