In praise of the Bow Thruster

[Greenheart]

Very fair point, AllanJ - it's a fairly free corner of the world we sail in, and gadgets that prevent collisions, must be preferable to collisions caused by gross incompetence by persons who weren't equipped with gadgets.

Of course, if they showed any aptitude, and application and nerve and fitness for purpose, then even the incompetents might find they didn't really need the gadgets. It's a good feeling, not needing costly 'clever' kit that allegedly improves or eases your life. Very emancipating. Try it.

I certainly don't mind, if people need labour-saving, skill-substituting systems on board. Why should I mind? But don't kid yourself it's envy that makes me disrespect the reliance. I don't envy the geography-under-achievers who can't drive without Sat-Nav. Do you? They didn't learn when they could have done, and silicon has provided a substitute for cerebral fitness. Is that more enviable or pitiable?

BlowingOldBoots, I didn't choose to be so determinedly-anti-thrusters. But, I still say, it's better to be able to walk, than to rely on a 12v scooter...and only people without the choice, rely on the hi-tech alternative. I'd always prefer to be competent without technology, than reliant on it. This pro-or-opposed theme won't change anyone's mind - but who would honestly prefer not to be able to dock their boat using skill alone? Any takers?

 

[Scotty_Tradewind]

It tells me you need to have a ship before you need a bowthruster but boat handling skills make good use of any technology

Invitation extended to you, to show me how to steer whilst going astern with any certainty in my long keeler, without using the bow thruster.

Accepted that I always rose to the challenge of manoevering my smaller long keeler. However, with age taking its toll on the old body and a bit more windage in this boat, the luxury of having the bow thruster and the extra safety it can afford my boat and others in tight circumstances, is reassuring.

 

[AllanJ]

Dan
I wish I could disagree (coz I like a debate), but I can't
p.s. even the forum IT doesn't like agreement; I got 'Internal Server Error' the first time I tried to post this.
pps doesn't change my main argument

 

[Poignard]

Invitation extended to you, to show me how to steer whilst going astern with any certainty in my long keeler, without using the bow thruster.

You mean you've bought another boat that won't steer astern?

 

[Greenheart]

Ha! Bow-thrusters are for...shifting irresponsibly-dumped sewage...

Dammit, AllanJ. Could try harder!! I'm keen as anything for a bust-up, and you've started agreeing? I feel like Bertie Wooster said, about arguing with Jeeves - that he was stepping blindfolded down a staircase, and was reaching out for the next step down, but he found he was already at the bottom.


Still, I'm chuffed if something I said made sense! (Are you quite sure it did?)

 

[Highland Bear]

I like my Bow Thruster! So there

Try to manage without it but to avoid bumping into someone else's pride and joy when the wind is being naughty, it's a handy piece of kit.

Anannuvver thing, when SWMBO is 42 ft in front of me, aiming to pick up a mooring buoy, and I drift off a bit so the hook won't quite reach, isn't it only gentlemanly to assist one's good lady by tweaking the bow back towards the buoy to make her day easier instead of having to go round again?

One wouldn't want to delay lunch after all!

 

[Greenheart]

If you put it that way, HighlandBear, I want one too!!

Of course, I'll never need it. Just a badge of chivalry... (I bet Vetus has bought megabucks Alpine retirement villages for its directors, and put their grand-kiddies through $100 per day prep schools, on the strength of such insecurities!)

 

[grumpygit]

Invitation extended to you, to show me how to steer whilst going astern with any certainty in my long keeler, without using the bow thruster.

Accepted that I always rose to the challenge of manoevering my smaller long keeler. However, with age taking its toll on the old body and a bit more windage in this boat, the luxury of having the bow thruster and the extra safety it can afford my boat and others in tight circumstances, is reassuring.

___________________________________________________________

+1

I’m 24+ tonnes, big keel and a rudder the size of a front door. Without out the bow thruster it behaves like a pure pig going astern. Once lined up though I can point the stern port or starboard by a 1 second burst either way on the bow thruster and fit stern too it into a berth with precision. To be fair I very rarely use it for going forward and turning. It will turn on the keel with full rudder and short burst of power.

I'll throw down the same gauntlet with mine, but no Turkish mooring allowed, nobody is rattling the chain down the side of our girl.

____________________________________________________________________

 

[stiknstring]

When we were looking for our current boat, a wise old sailor with a 46' sailboat parked up in St Peter Port said that manoeuvring a boat much more than 40' in a tight, crowded marina just made one a "bloody nuisance". Taking that advice, we installed one in our boat (50') and use it whenever we need that extra push against the current/wind. With modern boats having such high freeboard, they can rapidly get out of hand without the bowthruster as an additional safety tool and I am really pleased to have one. However, it also gives me great pleasure to handle the boat without recourse to the bowthruster.

I can almost hear the incoming flak - don't buy a boat bigger than you can handle - to save you the trouble of posting - that is tosh - the forces of nature are such that at certain sizes, no amount of careful boathandling can guard against guty conditions at close quarters.

Firmly in the "luv 'em" camp

 

[DogWatch]

(2) Using it for more than 10 seconds (in less than an F6) would seem to smack of bad seamanship.

Why have you set such a bizarre arbitrary rule of usage?

I don't understand the concept of fitting such a brilliant tool and then limiting it's use in some weird challenge scenario. I am wondering if the anti brigade are basing their snobbery on envy.

I have twin engines like snowy which does make life easier, but I wouldn't hesitate to install a thruster on a boat that was too big to give a shove off the pontoon. I think as well as envy on this thread there is a lack of knowledge that bigger boats need a little extra help from time to time, you can't push a 40ft yacht in the same way as a 24ft'er.

I remember watching a YBW youtube video last year of a boat fitted with a remote control thruster that the guy was driving from the pontoon while he tied her off. What a fantastic idea, especially if you have a short crew who keeps forgetting how to tie knots

 

[Fire99]

Any mooring that doesn't involve the cracking of broken GRP / Wood / Metal or other boat construction, is a good mooring in my book.

We could start arguing GPS, AIS, Radar etc etc are signs of bad seamanship or go back far enough and anyone who can't navigate the 'celestial' way should be 'land lubbers'.

Roller Furling foresails are cheating, GRP is for those who can't be bothered to look after their boat.
An outboard motor on your tender is for those too lazy to row

Don't get me started on 'Lazy-Jacks' or roller reefing mainsails.

Throughout time, aids appear to make 'boating' easier for the masses to enjoy and not exclusive to those who are either highly skilled or well off enough to hire a crew.

Just because some people like to blow smoke up their own backsides on their ability to 'dock' doesn't mean that any aid used, for those who just wan't a safe arrival, is a crime.

There are far greater 'boating sins' out there and dare I say one of them is intolerance.

 

[cozzykim]

Any mooring that doesn't involve the cracking of broken GRP / Wood / Metal or other boat construction, is a good mooring in my book.

We could start arguing GPS, AIS, Radar etc etc are signs of bad seamanship or go back far enough and anyone who can't navigate the 'celestial' way should be 'land lubbers'.

Roller Furling foresails are cheating, GRP is for those who can't be bothered to look after their boat.
An outboard motor on your tender is for those too lazy to row

Don't get me started on 'Lazy-Jacks' or roller reefing mainsails.

Throughout time, aids appear to make 'boating' easier for the masses to enjoy and not exclusive to those who are either highly skilled or well off enough to hire a crew.

Just because some people like to blow smoke up their own backsides on their ability to 'dock' doesn't mean that any aid used, for those who just wan't a safe arrival, is a crime.

There are far greater 'boating sins' out there and dare I say one of them is intolerance.

Or even elitism

 

[Fire99]

Or even elitism

True..

 

[Greenheart]

Gentlemen, we're digging deep here, into rare varieties of nonsense, which generally only see daylight, mid-afternoon on Boxing Day, when semi-plastered strangers round the part-deserted lunchtime table, voice woeful platitudes to break the silence. Can't we omit the cr**?

FACTS:

a) Certain slab-sided commercial vessels which must achieve safe all-weather ingress/egress to and from tight berths amongst other vessels, require and greatly benefit from, bow and stern thrusters.

b) Innumerable ill-practiced, conspicuously unskilled or innattentive amateur private skippers have found that their ability is not even equal to the most elementary aspects of docking...

...so they choose instead, to claim that what used to be a skill common to almost all self-respecting yachtsmen everywhere, is now an unwarrantable risk, but one that is conveniently soluble by adopting thrusters, which are reliably effective, regardless of the skipper's judgement...rather than just by learning a time-proven method, which was hitherto sufficient, but which requires an unpalatable degree of effort and nerve, apparently beyond their patience or mental capacity.

Speaking for myself, I don't lack confidence or competence, and I've never wished I had thrusters fitted. I'm very relieved, not to be so spineless that I doubt my (limited) comprehension of physics and mathematics enough to need an extra, special little engine mounted sideways so I can kick the hull this way or that, to make up for my errors.

It's particularly repulsive, to suggest that chaps who manage, just fine, without thrusters, actually envy skippers so-equipped. The very opposite is true. Be honest, here...in filthy weather, on a boat you don't know, in an unfamiliar harbour, would you rather be aboard Vessel X, with Mr A, who only trusts himself to dock with thrusters...or, with Mr B, who knows how thrusters work, but also knows how he will get you safely ashore, without them?

I totally admit that certain hulls are impossibly reluctant or unresponsive to intelligent throttle and rudder use at low speeds; such vessels' skippers are exempt from contempt.

The rest of you, need a better excuse. Don't ask me to be sorry, except for being honest.

 

[boomerangben]

Sailing boats have never been designed to manoeuvre in confined areas such as marinas. If you choose to keep your boat in a marina, then a bow thruster seems like a wise investment. If you keep a boat on a mooring that you can sail onto (if you so chose), a bow thruster would seem an extravagance.

I wonder how long it would be before bow thrusters to become compulsory in some marinas. The owners would have the opportunities to put even more berths into a given space.

 

[Pete In The East]

I don't have a bowthruster, but would vety mcuh like one for those marina moments!

I can only imagine thoase who are strongly anti these devices are a bit resentful that they dont have one.

 

[mcframe]

(2) Using it for more than 10 seconds (in less than an F6) would seem to smack of bad seamanship.

Why have you set such a bizarre arbitrary rule of usage?

OK, I'll grant the F6 is a bit arbitrary, but when you hear one running on a mobo for >30 seconds, it's often apparent that Plan A isn't working, so a quick switch to Plan B might be in order before the crunch...

It can be just another case of inappropriate, excessive use of throttle to try to overcome the laws of physics/wind/tide. That said, if it can help a yacht turn the bow through the wind in a downwind dead-end 'cos the boat wouldn't steer astern, then I don't think there are any alternatives.

 

[dslittle]

without[/I] thrusters, actually envy skippers so-equipped. The very opposite is true. Be honest, here...in filthy weather, on a boat you don't know, in an unfamiliar harbour, would you rather be aboard Vessel X, with Mr A, who only trusts himself to dock with thrusters...or, with Mr B, who knows how thrusters work, but also knows how he will get you safely ashore, without them?
QUOTE]

I am not sure that I have ever seen a thread by someone with bow thrusters criticising any one for managing without them.

I now have bow thrusters and use them. I never had them before and still amnaged to moor up safely. Am I now a worse sailor?

Being honest I would like Mr B on a yacht with bow thrusters...

 

[Fire99]

The beauty of people.. The more I think i've heard it all, someone comes along and proves me wrong

I'm genuinely amazed that a little propeller in a tube, hidden underwater, can cause such distress to some folk...

Did we have the same old nonsense when the first 'plastic fantastic' boat appeared and upset the 'planks n nails' brigade?

 

[Greenheart]

Look back a little. Some of this thread's contributors seem to object strongly, to the suggestion that tasks they presently accomplish with thrusters, were ever equally-well achieved by anyone, without them. Some angry denial of their own progressive indolence, perhaps.

I'm actually rather a 1st eleven player in the name of idleness. I enjoy being free to do nothing much. But, I recognise the everyday necessity to apply mind and muscle to mooring situations. And so, I really do p*** freely, on anyone who claims full seagoing competence, whilst actually only understanding how to use some switchgear, from the wheelhouse.

I strongly suspect that at least half of everything most of us secretly regard as inherent to our yachting-heaven scenes...the scents and sights and sounds, and our presence on a warm deck, pulling lines and fending off; it's all largely a question of risks, and of our keeping cool in those situations. We like to believe sailing makes us adventurous. I think it's unfortunate, if the reality, when we encounter it, involves ropework and knowledge of leverage which we're ill-equipped to apply. That's all.