Hi just about to buy a 27 but it has no drying out legs. Are these necessary when drying out or is the angle of heel not too much because of the shallow keel . Any thoughts please
It depends on the context, and especially on the nature of the bottom where you are drying out. It's also different if you are planning to moor your boat somewhere regularly, than if it is just from time to time when you are cruising, or only in the event you run aground by accident.
On a firm bottom an LM27 will heel significantly, but not as far as a boat with a deep fin keel. I will post a couple of pictures below of LM27s aground on hard bottoms I found on the internet to give you an idea. Note the red boat is being held almost upright by the sandbank the boat is (deliberately, I assume) leaned against. Leaning as far as the blue LM it will be a little difficult to move around in the boat.
Before drying out you need to be reasonably confident that there are no rocks or debris which the boat's hull sides which could potential puncture the hull side if it ended up leaning on them. Ideally, view the area on a low tide before drying out there.
If the bottom for a drying mooring (pontoon, swinging or fore-and-aft) is mud the boat may lean for the first few tides, but the keel will eventually form a depression in the mud and sit upright. My LM27, under the previous owner, lived on a drying pontoon mooring in a muddy tidal creek, and there was a clear 'mudline' on the hull, a little below the waterline, showing that it sat upright sunk well into the mud.
If drying the boat out in mud, it is advisable to close the seacocks of underwater inlets/outlets, or at least the engine cooling water intake, to reduce the chance of is becoming blocked with mud. They are unlikely to become blocked (I've forgotten on occasion without ill effect), and even if they are blocked at first, the sea will almost certainly soon wash it out, but you don't want a delay to the engine cooling.
On a previous boat, not an LM but with a similar shallow long keel, I went aground on a falling tide on two occasions when we were being 'adventurous' in shallow waters. The boat in these circumstances would not lean over so far as to be dangerous or alarming, (I think I guessed at the time it was about 25 or 30 degrees, but it did become difficult to move about, and at low tide too much of an angle to use the cooker. There were no rocks about and little risk of debris, so when it happened we just put the kettle on to make some tea before the heel became too great as the tide departed, and then settled down lying against the back of the cockpit seat or a berth below, to snooze or read a book until the tide came back in. No big deal.
In my LM27 I have twice visited Gravelines in northern France, where the marina dries to very soft mud at low tide. The boat just sank into it, staying upright, as also do fin keelers).
It rather depends on the answer to the question “why do you want to dry out”. As Sula says, an LM27 will easily sink into soft mud -mine spent all last year like this. However, if you want to scrub the bottom or do a repair, why not lean against a scrubbing berth? The LM’s long keel will make this an easy task as long as you ensure that the boat leans slightly inwards - flake out your anchor and chain on the side deck plus main halliard to the quay and good strong warps. I have done this many times with fin keel boats so the LM should be easy. I wouldn’t choose to dry out as in Sula’s photos - probably OK if no wind & sea, but other wise......
My LM27 also has retro fitted bilge plates, which was one of the reasons I bought her. I had a berth in a drying harbour with a muddy bottom but having seen some of the jaunty angles other long keepers were sitting at I decided to go for this configuration.
