In praise of the Bow Thruster

[Nostrodamus]

Boomerangben,

You are far too diplomatic to ever be on these forums.
You cannot come on here spouting common sense. That is not what these forums are for.
You have to strongly, agree, disagree, have some completely of the wall idea or drift the thread into another universe.

 

[Tidewaiter2]

Your New Modern southerly...

I might have one, in future, on my future Southerly, for use when the keel is up, but never in use for more than 10 seconds at a time.

Of course, if I get more-than-enough numbers on the lottery for the Southerly, then I expect #1 son to use the rib to help turn the bow when required ;->

q.v. charter/mooring/thermos/deckchair/popcorn thread.

... your new twin rudder Southerly will need the "optional" bow thruster, trust me

 

[Tidewaiter2]

You are too good & too sensible...

I am sure that psychologists would have lots to say about threads such as this. Flying forums are plagued with analogous threads as well - new technology vs old hard won skills.

As a professional pilot, GPS is a great help and makes the day a lot easier. However navigating without one is immensely satisfying.

This forum is directed at those who boat for fun. We all find our fun in different ways. If a bow thruster increases the enjoyment you get from sailing that's great. If you take joy from the fact that you manage without one, that's great too. As with all things in life though, you need to have respect for others and their property. So if you choose to leave a marina on a pre dawn tide, go easy on the joystick (or even better, leave it off if conditions allow). If on the other hand you are arriving on a crosswind, cross tide berth without a bow thruster with lots to hit on either side perhaps courtesy and good sense would demand some external assistance or an alternative berth.

...for these Foruii- just put out all 14 fenders, hands to prayer, stand by to cock it up traditionally- rig 20ft bowsprit

Oh and you will end up sideways in a 35' berth in a 37' boat, trust me, i've done it; "berthed as directed, Sir"

 

[jordanbasset]

Hi Dancrane, can agree with your comment100% -
"So, JordanBasset, yes; ideally, I like 'going sailing' to mean exactly that, and no more"

 

[Greenheart]

As in, sails, not propellors.

Glad I wasn't misunderstood.

Happy sailing.

 

[Nostrodamus]

But if you cannot get out in the first place yet the boat with the underwater washing machine can then there is only one person who will enjoy their days sailing.

I think we have pushed the button on bow thrusters untilthe battery is flat, but if I had a stern thruster as well... now that is anothe thread for another time.

It was an enjoyable debate though.

 

[jordanbasset]

But if you cannot get out in the first place yet the boat with the underwater washing machine can then there is only one person who will enjoy their days sailing.

I think we have pushed the button on bow thrusters untilthe battery is flat, but if I had a stern thruster as well... now that is anothe thread for another time.

It was an enjoyable debate though.

+1

 

[Greenheart]

Enjoyed Hornblower on ITV3 earlier, with the power-mad captain sending his enormous 74 aground, then the crew having to use wit and muscle and applied intelligence and learning, to kedge and winch and rock and rattle the ship loose. Techniques which I haven't often needed, but ones which I'd feel very sad (and stupid) not to be able to consider, if the need arose.

If, instead, my only real solution to questions of manoeuvering was the bow-thruster...well, I think the practical boating and sailing I've always enjoyed - the effective use of subtlety and dexterity, good judgement and plenty of raw muscle - would lose a tragic amount of its current available appeal.

As has been rightly said, to each, their own. I'm genuinely glad, that other people are as I happy as I am.

I'm just not sure why anyone with a choice, would fit equipment that anaesthetises them from so much enjoyably tactile influence over the way a 'living' vessel responds to human control.

Through the 'eighties, and much later, I always agreed with mates who bemoaned the lack of natural feel and sensitivity of computer-game control buttons. They weren't even a fraction as much fun, or as rewarding as actually steering a car, firing a gun or kicking a ball.

How on earth has Vetus managed to make a virtue of the joystick?! Credit to them for their marketing cleverness, but they'll never sell me one, until it's to steer a wheelchair!

 

[Highland Bear]

Night night

 

[Greenheart]

Dear me! Is it dark early, in South Bucks? I believe it's all that fly-by-wire boating, it makes you sleepy. Bores me, too.

 

[boomerangben]

Silly me for bringing sense to the party. If you don't like your neighbour's bow thrusters feed it polypropylene rope. It'll soon bring the bow round then up onto the pontoon providing you have secured the other end well enough.

 

[Nostrodamus]

Boomerangben,

That is a far better approach than being diplomatic, some off the wall thinking there, I like it and you are welcome to stay just as long as you wish.

If Hornblowers captain had a bowthruster in the first place he probably would not have ended up on the rocks.

For me that is my last on this thread so as was so well put .... Goodnight

 

[Croc]

I have spent fifty plus years sailing dinghies and small keel boats and mostly have moored without problems because despite the lack of formal sail training I have just about absorbed enough knowledge ( mainly through the help of a competent crew who talks through each manouvre instictively before we start it) to do it without causing damage.
Fairly late in life I have taken up motorboating as well as sailing and was...still am..horrified to realise parking the damn things has no resembleance to gentle steering in a boat with a proper rudder and a lump iron underneath and needs a different but very real skill.
I am sure there is pleasure in learning to do it properly without the noise of a bowthruster and if I have got enough time I will do it but as time is quantity that is running out I will use the B/T and put up with the patronising clever dicks and just get on with life.

 

[Greenheart]

Goodnight, indeed, Nostrodamus. May you all sleep well, perfectly undisturbed. With luck, your neighbours' berths are home to users of those wonderfully advanced, virtually noiseless bow-thrusters...what are they called? Ah, yes - 'Judgement' and 'Practice'. Amazingly good systems. Not instantly acquired, but cheap and reliable, and instantly transferable from one vessel to another, with surprisingly little labour. None, in fact. Worth trying, I've never known them fail.

Croc, you sound like you're steaming!!

 

[BrianH]

This thread made me more deeply reflect on my bow-thruster-less condition. As earlier recounted, I had my choice of buying the same boat with or without, and chose without - later questioning my choice when attempting to manoeuver the long-keeler in tight places.

But on reflection, apart from the difficulty of accepting an inelegant, hydrodynamically inefficient hole in the bow, the clincher should really be: how to deal with the dreaded tube worm fouling that, here where I keep my boat, focuses on propellers - whatever we paint them with or whether they are polished to a gleaming finish?

If ever there was proof evident of climate change it is the explosion of marine life in our northern Adriatic lagoon environment over the past couple of years. With no tides to lean against a wall between tides to scrub off I regularly have to immerse myself to scrape the cluster colonies of tube worm housings off the propeller (despite an annual haul-out and anti-fouling), without which, the water astern foams and boils but we go nowhere.

It is a fairly easy operation with one foot on the keel-rudder skeg and bracing the left hand on the permanent aft ladder, I can reach the propeller with the scraper in the right hand. I can only imagine that bow-thruster propellers suffer this problem too and would be impossible to clear so easily.

 

[Capt Cautious]

Honestly – where do all the luddites appear from as soon as bow thrusters are mentioned ? It’s a peculiarly British thing I think.

The inference always seems to be that one should be in some way ashamed for ones perceived inabilities. I´m quite sure that a good few of the luddites rely fairly heavily on other fairly modern nautical innovations. Such electronic distractions as Radar, Sonar (whats wrong with a leadline ?), VHF, and other more cumbersome unnecessary advances such as Inflatable Liferafts, flushing toilets, electric windlasses.

I have two bow thrusters – one on my big boat, one on my small one. I don’t need either of them. But they are mine to play with and do what I want, and I enjoy being able to do things with either vessel that I could not do without a thruster.

Not all people have the benefit of years of ship/boat handling experience, and it is not mandatory. If professionals, who probably know what they talk about a fair percentage of the time, can cut em some slack why can´t a small but vocal minority of amateur leisure sailors.? If someone feels comfortable with a bow thruster – then leave them be. Ownership of a boat is a personal experience, unequalled. We should never be made to feel inadequate for merely wanting to enjoy our vessels.

CC (slightly grumpy)

 

[Greenheart]

Alright, I confess:

How right you are in fact, Captain C. No need to feel grumpy about it.

Although...perhaps you've missed the central, delightfully infantile, foolishly, almost exclusively male, put-down-and-look-down, one-or-two-upmanship instinct, which is at the core of the market for most boats and sportier cars, and behind the competition for the attention of eye-catching ladies. If they're too effortless, their owners/companions will always find themselves short of respect!

Follow me here...

I really hate driving cars that have manual transmission, or unpowered steering. I've never had the least difficulty changing gear, but I just can't be bothered. This tends to cause a failure of comprehension in chaps I tell (though I haven't discussed it with any Americans).

It really does seem, often, to affect the respect in which I am regarded, this fact that I'd sooner not form a quasi-organic relationship with the clutch. I don't care about the car's 'steering feel' either, or something apparently desirable, known as a 'firm ride'. I'd sooner take it easy, chat with SWMBChauffeured, and let the car just find its way safely in the general direction I point it.

BUT...aboard the boat...anything which is adopted by anyone who either can't or worse, won't do it the relatively burdensome conventional way, I call a slacker's shortcut.

I think those other drivers, (for whom I cannot actually speak) believe that I'm not getting the full satisfaction from driving, which they themselves would be sorry to miss, and which they can't stop talking about. They doubt my competence, driving at speed or in poor conditions. Not for any proven reason, but that doesn't have a thing to do with it. I'm obviously detached from the process, and all their undeniable cleverness which they take so tediously seriously.

They're unclear about my not caring if I come last in traffic-light drag-races, and my total absence of interest in the brakes or suspension. I'm a terrible slacker in the car, I suppose. The difference being, I don't deny it.

I'm very sure, in fact I'm totally, childishly, patronisingly certain, that bow-thrusters are easier, and really quite sensible. Frankly, they're a slacker's shortcut, an idler's alternative to habitually practising the thoroughly effective techniques by which a competent skipper can dock without thrusters.

Not worth denying, is it? Now, sleep well. May flights of thrusters shunt thee sideways to thy berths.

 

[Scotty_Tradewind]

Returning to my raft/pontoon mooring, a Westerly F6 gusting 7 was howling accross Portsmouth harbour. We arrived and the crew had stowed the once reefed sails.
On the way up the harbour I had been chewing over the problem of getting safely onto my birth. In previous years even single handed, I would have come up to my swinging mooring in my Twister head to wind, paced forward and hooked up the pick up bouy.
With the wind blowing me sideways onto the pontoon and having more windage in this boat with a fairly small space to fit into I was having to come up with a different solution.
I ferry glided head to wind with her stern facing the pontoon some two lengths out, to get used to the conditions and to see how she behaved.
With zero knots of headway, holding her position was not easy with the rudder because to get it to respond I needed a couple of knots forward speed at least with that wind.
A couple of seconds with the BT one way or the other and she would come back into line. Now the problem was to drop back those two lengths and as we approached the pontoon to allow her bow to come off the wind so that she was alongside the pontoon.
It took a bit of rehearsing but it worked. I do happen to have on board 13 fenders... just in case. However, I do get a great deal of satisfaction in sailing a good seaboat in challenging conditions for a while, and who knows the practice may come in handy one day when I'm caught out somewhere. Not eveyones cup of tea i know but I'm not likely to be sat at home on a very windy weekend, but out there getting on with it.
One things for certain, I would have put her and the other boats on the pontoon at great risk if it hadn't been for the BT and I may have had to resort to leaving my boat somewhere else for the night and waited for the winds to die.
What if the BT had failed at the last minute..... remember the 13 fenders, some of them quite big!

 

[Capt Cautious]

So Dancrane - not quite the luddite.

I still have to take issue.

Re Frankly, they're a slacker's shortcut, an idler's alternative to habitually practising the thoroughly effective techniques by which a competent skipper can dock without thrusters.

You did it again. You used the words competent and thruster in the same sentence. One is not a substitute for the other.
My big boat, I can turn short round in a 250m wide channel, in a breeze, with less than 10m clearance either end, with no use of anchors or tugs. Does that make me a slacker ? Does it mean I lack competence ? I dont think so. Are you saying you'd attempt the manoeuvre without a thruster ? It seems so. Some things are simply possible with a thruster that are either inadvisable or impossible without, no matter how competent a master you may be.

Its a British thing for sure. But I'm with you on the stickshift.

CC

 

[snowleopard]

Why would one assume that because a person uses a shortcut they are not capable of doing things the old fashioned way? Because I use a GPS, don't sneer at me thinking I don't know how to use a sextant. Because I use a bow thruster don't assume I can't do the job with engine, rudder and windage. Because I motor up a river don't assume I don't know how to beat under sail. Because I use an outboard on my dinghy don't assume I can't row or scull.

It may give you pleasure to do things the old-fashioned way but it doesn't make you a superior being or give you the right to denigrate those who are doing it the modern way on this occasion.

Those who use modern aids and can't cope when they break down are another case.