Reply To: Windage!!

Hi Steve (and Mel); Hope you are well. I have a couple of quick comments about this tricky situation based on experience with a 24ft Woods Strider and the HT (even with two engines). (1) Bloody docking! Close quarters manoeuvring is always the stressful part of sailing, especially where one has no choice of the berth. (2) Irrespective of engine and skill, always use lots of well placed fenders. Ball/buoy ones needed near bow due to hull shape and stern (to protect those rudders). I think its a bit of a joke when I see some boats' lack of fendering. (3) In terms of my experience, when windy, the bows will ALWAYS blow-off (irrespective of engine config) and the stern WILL hunt the wind better than the bows, and you can hold it more easily stern-to. (4) To try and fight this is pointless (assuming there's no tide to help). Therefore use this to advantage wherever poss: reverse in, even to just get an aft quarter near the dock, and get Mel to drop/lasso a line over a cleat warps, motoring against it/them as appropriate, or just to hold you still(ish). (5) When hardly moving, with fenders out = no damage – and warp alongside the adjoining boat/pontoon. (6) Contrary to what some others have said ( I think), if your engine is not steerable, its key to remember that rudders only work when water is 'significantly' flowing over them. So, what you have to do is have a longer reverse run up, in a straight line, rudders amidship. Get a lot of sternway (3, 4, 5 knots – experiment with wind conditions) – can often feel the rudders starting to pull/turn one way on their own – then quickly neutral the engine, and then steer using the rudders for the manoeuver at the end, in one smooth operation! If you keep the non-steerable engine on-power this will fight the turn created by the rudders (wait until the turn has begun in earnest for any power blips). It takes confidence to get the sternway, but I found it the only way. The thing is that rudders need that waterflow . Having only a little way thru the water means you can only manoeuvre by engines (and external forces), which with a single, central, non-steerable engine, with no warp/cleated pivot points, it's pretty impossible to do! A final thought – why not become the master of all this and post it on U tube 😉