I keep my rudder amidships and put the tranny in reverse just long enough to
get the boat moving, then neutral, coast, reverse, neutral, coast, and so on
until I'm out of the slip. It'll stay pretty straight as long as you get it
out of gear before it starts to walk.
"Roger Long" wrote in message
...
Having sailed on boats from 7 to over 300 feet, I tend to think of my
sailing experience as being fairly broad. I never thought about it until
today but, while it may be broad, there is a big hole in the middle.

Most of my command time is in boats under 30 feet, small and light enough
to just manhandle around while docking and undocking. Pull up to the dock,
jump off, grab the rail, boat stops. My experience in larger boats has all
been as crew and most of those boats have been 60 feet and over so
everything was done with well orchestrated line handling and power.

We just moved to our permanent dock which is longer and narrower than the
temporary one we were on. The boat will not back out now without the stern
walking far enough that we'll hit the boat on the other side of the slip
(mercifully, it hasn't shown up yet but I'm trying to keep the space
inviolate for practice). My crew is small enough in stature that our 32
footer might as well be one of the big sail training vessels I'm familiar
with as far as fending off or hauling the bow or stern in with a dock line
is concerned.

I lay awake the other night trying to think how we were going to get out
of the slip the next morning. I asked myself what they would do on the
schooner "Westward". Simple.

The next day, I explained the maneuver to the kids and guests. I then set
a stern spring planning to back against it to pull the stern in and the
bow out before casting off the spring. This would turn the boat enough in
the slip that she would have to straighten out in backing and about double
the distance I could back before the stern swung too far.

I called for the bow line to be let go and put the engine in reverse.
Nothing happened. The engine ran and there was some thrashing under the
counter but the boat didn't move. More power, nothing. It was dead calm
but the boat simply would not turn. I used about as much RPM as the prop
will absorb in bollard pull conditions and the boat still didn't turn. I
finally said the hell with it, cast off the spring, and we backed out
taking a huge imaginary chunk out of the rail of our mythical slip mate as
we went.

The bottom line is that 15 horsepower in reverse through a two blade prop
on a heavy 32 foot boat isn't going to do squat in fancy line maneuvers.
I'm going to have to make sure I always invite some big guests for every
sail or think of something else.

How do you do it?

--

Roger Long