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SpottyDog5

SpottyDog5

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What a cock up! , getting back on the berth this afternoon - ended up sidewards on the end of the finger. The wind was a bit gusty,nothing too much F 3-4 and a bit, bit of tide, I just couldn't put the boat where I wanted.
Should be easy twin shafts and a bow thruster.
Boat fairly new to me been out 4 times, not perfert berthing, but ok.
Whats the solution :
Get a stern thruster.?
Get a easier berth (I told mine in tight & flow eddies)?
Get more training?
All of the above.

Ps
Malaprop- no input required- thank you
 
Ha..we all make that kind of cock-up. If you didn't damage anything apart from your pride that's good and no doubt you are reflecting on what went wrong.

I'll take a guess, you came in slow, new boat and all that, and the wind had more power than your way through the water and bow thruster. Solution, depends much on the circumstances but say, ignoring currents for the mo......wind on the starboard beam, finger to port, finger becomes a lee shore effectively, so, come in fairly fast, stop off the finger, wind pushes you in. Wind off the finger, finger becomes a weather shore, need to come alongside putting the bow on and drive her, then at last minute in helm to starboard while way still on go astern, momentum takes in stern and crew make fast sharpish before wind takes over. Add tidal currents to above, which will have the most effect in either situation?

You will want to look at your berth and consider your positioning and responses under varying circumstances of wind and tidal currents and the effects they can have.

Just practice in all conditions is the only answer. I had a steel dutch deep draft piggie single screw before, I learnt to use wind and tide and screw paddle effect because up in East Anglia the winds whistled in off the North Sea with nothing to stop them and one could go merrily sailing off sideways totally out of control if the berthing manouver wasn't positive, slowly slowly always resulted in problems and egg on face.
 
Get more practice. I had a F43 myself and I cocked it up the first few times reversing into my berth but I got more confident with time. IMHO, the F43 has got quite a lot of windage for the relatively modest amount of hull gripping the water so it's not the easiest shaftdrive boat to manouvre. Also, if I remember correctly, the bow thruster is somewhat pathetic too. One tip though. If you have a cockpit canopy fitted, open up the sides to reduce the windage
Forget about a sternthruster. Nobody needs a sternthruster if they've got 2 engines. It might be worth talking to the bowthruster manufacturer to see if there's a cheap upgrade like a change to a newer design of prop
 
reminds me of when we first went out on ours!!! stick with it!!!!

we had ours on the end of a finger pontoon. alongside a p23M, on the wrong side of a fuel berth and i have cleaned mi memory of all the other screw ups, (except maybe touching the bottom in newtown creek on the way out!! thank got for a rising tide!!)

more training ... maybe but if you have been boating for a while, maybe just some practice on a new boat!!!

whilst some people may have been laughing at you, those who have boats will have been there, the ones worth talking to will remember they have done the same too!|!!

good luck and maybe a few hours of berthing practice one week day when its quiet??
 
Good advice guys, Clive you must have been there, you described it so well!
I just went slow in case it went wrong. Dohh
Mike, I did have the side screens in!
Just going through the post mortem in my head, really pi**ed me off....
 
A flybridge in the wind isn't the easiest. Knowing which will have the predominent effect - wind or tide - isn't always obvious.

I don't think you need any of the things suggested, just more practice. Today's incident is a notch on the experience stick. If you need any of them, the training is the one, the others are just polyfillering over cracks.

One thing I do find useful is a dinghy racing burghee right forward on the pulpit - it can help you anticipate what the wind is going to do to the bows.

I hope not much damage was done.

edit - internet connection funny this evening i couldn't see the other replies when I posted.....
 
Thanks for the replies and PMs .
Pleased to report I have no damage, my crew(wife) was fantastic with a roving fender, just my confidence that took a bashing.
I guess this is the "joys" of boating.
My marina (Universal) have offered me a temporary easier berth just on the inside of a hammerhead, I going take them up this while, I have more training & gain more experiance.
 
Try manouvering around an empty mooring buoy in differing wind & tide conditions. Plenty of room for error and minimum consequences. Always try to predict what will happen, then see what actually happens & try to square the circle to figure out the differences.

It's known as the "Kolb learning cycle". Plan - do - review, interpret & plan next event.

Experiment with fast, slow & moderate approach speeds, the differences may be significant. I dislike marinas because of the limited space & risk of expensive damage to innocent bystanders. In my harbour, I can carry out a slow approach from some distance away, which allows me to assess the impact of wind & tide early & adjust my speed/ angle of approach to get it right. Wherever possible approach into the tide to reduce speed over the ground while maintaining steerage. Relying on engines & thruster for steerage requires good and accurate judgement of the various throttle settings
 
Have you come from a sterndrive? If so, you do know that in most circumstances you don't touch the wheel with shafts, do it all on the engines? I'm sure you know that, but just in case ...

Otherwise I agree all Deleted User's comments, F43's are light, high sided, and Sealine fit weedy bowthrusters, so not the easiest flybridge to park, but you'll soon get it with a bit of practice.
 
Quote: "Good advice guys, Clive you must have been there, you described it so well!
I just went slow in case it went wrong. Dohh"

Been in similar so it wasn't hard to guess what went wrong for you.

Some have said go slow into wind & current so slow speed over the ground, if that suits the conditions fair enough but there are, as you now know, times when you have to be more positive and agressive to get into a berthing position using more speed and power than you'd like just to keep control of a boat under undue influence of wind and current. sounds like your wife did a star turn with the fender, good on her because sometimes that is exactly what you have to do, come in hard, rely on your fender and even drive against it to force the thing into position followed by a quick off power/rush to get her tied off before she takes charge again. It can be scary but beats making a pefect landfall but too far off and drifting ever further from the berth with the risk of hitting something else also expensive.

You can't beat a nice fat fender on the bow to drive into and if you've got those silly little sausages I reccomend something big on each bow instead. That way you can also get off a lee shore type berth by going ahead into a spring, confident that as she rolls on the fender at the bow and the stern comes nicely out you aren't doing any damage. Keep practicing and good luck. It's called seamanship, manouvering in tight and difficult conditions successfully is what sorts seaman from landlubbers and you'll soon be proud of your professionalism.
 
Good comments Clive.. They say anybody can leave a berth, but the skill is in coming back.

IMO thrusters with twin motors is just one too many levers to think about, they are usually under-powered anyway as the wind reaches 20 knots.
I like nice big permanently attached berth fenders, all the way to the outer pile bracket. If it goes pear-shaped, just let her fall against them.
The problems with berthing in wind is not the consistant wind, but the unpredictable gusts.
 
[ QUOTE ]
Malaprop- no input required- thank you [ QUOTE ]


Wot, not even from the bottom of the class??
I've been there more times than most. Try this for a larf:

Came home singlehanded, wind across the finger blowing me off, positive arrival, bit of welly to stop alongide as fenders touch, leap out of wheelhouse and grab boathook to catch pontoon cleat - and the posey telescopic thing comes apart under the strain and I drift into the next berth with no fenders on that side! Doh!!

For the unitiated those telescopic bits only float long enough to tempt you to try to retrieve the lost section only to see it sink out of reach.

And if you really want a fright just do the same in the dark. That's when you curse marina lights illuminating the pontoons but dazzling you witless.

Diagonal parking? Been there, wrote the book (admittedly with bruised fingers.)
 
I reckon you can't beat a weekday with not too many people watching just to give you the headspace to practise with this boat. Sure it's not you. It's having done the manoeuvre enough times in THIS boat so you are confident that you know how much lateral movement you're going to get when it all starts to go out of shape and so that you don't overcompensate and spend all your time dialling in little corrections.
 
DavidJ's comments are true! We are in St Helier at the moment and there are a lot of French boats coming into the marina. One thing that sticks out in my mind is that a good percentage of them just aim for the pontoon and hope for the best!!


It's been quite windy today so it has been more interesting than usual /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif They don't seem to be worried about getting it right, just hope for a bit of luck and someone to grab their lines and drag the boat on!
 
Clives right need to keep way on when windy still should be able to do it in tickover. Momentum is the key, stop and the wind will take over
 
Well, if it makes you feel any better, one boat just along from us failed altogether to get back into his berth due to cross wind and had a collision with a berthed boat and shortly after a yacht had to be rescued by the marina work boat after getting it wrong and ending up being pinned onto the sterns of three berthed boats with only feet and roving fenders saving the day. I nearly ballsed my own berthing after misjudging how much I was being pushed across the fairway, and squashed the fenders that hard against the pontoon they fired us back across the berth towards our neighbour at alarming speed before ropes were thrown. (I just manged to catch it). I also dinged a prop in Poole harbour this morning, and that's the second in a month after I misread the speed on the bidata for depth (yes, plonker, I know) crunching both props... Moral is sh*t it happens to us all. As has been said, practice makes perfect (ish), keep at it.
 
Must have been a weekend for it - a Trader 42 ping-ponged around our fairway - which was a little suprising given it wasn't that windy at the time and very little tide.

When I poked my head out, they were 6inches from my bow and backing away with large handfuls of revs, but apparently didn't touch me and the new scratch must have been someone else *sigh*. I did see them hit another boat though - so they won't wriggle out of that one.
 
Maybe there were a few boaters out there with new boats this season plus a few rusty existing owners venturing out for the first time this year. Mix in a bit of wind and half term week traffic and there's plenty of scope for a bit of grp mashing
 
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