Manouvres In Tight Spaces

Re: What cruel jibes?

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It would be nice if when making scathing comments that you state you are in truth an 'interested party'

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Correct Robin I did once work for John Goode at Southern, however I left and am equally critical as I am of praise for John Goode. He has some great ideas and some not so great ideas. And I had my reasons for leaving.
However I am not biased either way.
And though my post may seem and may even have been scathing. The point I am trying to make is simply that the technique of using a sail up the backstay is a perfectly seamanlike practice. You dismissed it immediately as unsafe and that nobody should do it near your boat. But nobody should make any manouevre in an unsafe manner it has nothing to do with sails up backstays. Nobody (I think) has ever said that a bunch of novices should take a difficult to manouvre yacht and take it into a situation they cannot get out of.
That is the point of using an instructor, at some point you have to progress from berthing in an empty pontoon to berthing in a very crowded one and it is usually helpful and safer for most people to do that with an instructor, obviously you had a bad experience, but even instructors get it wrong and not all are good.
I agree with Twister Ken though when he stated that he would radio the marina and try and get an easy berth, that is obviously the correct and seamanlike thing to do. Though quite often you have no choice.
And a few well practiced techniques can make a seemingly unhandleable boat into a handleable one

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If the wind is straight down a blind alley - thats the best direction as I know the only place I can reverse is dead to wind. In these circumstances I would not set the mizzen. Nigel calls this action of stop go - and resetting up as scalloping - and says it cannot be done on a long keeler - Do it all the time - there is no alternative - its actually quite fun.


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Agreed, but don't have a mizzen to worry about.

Wind blowing on the bow is pretty much OK for me to because I can sort of hover on the spot with very short dabs of power, while the wind blows the bow back past the stern allowing me to motor out forwards once past the 90+ degree stage. It's x-winds which cause palpitations.

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Re: Crosswinds

Yes - agreed - the stakes are much higher! The problem here is that one has to keep much more speed on the boat, in order to be able to slide the stern sideways with a hard aport -full astern manouver, which should get the bows well up to the wind - before full ahead. I have a huge 3 bladed propellor and 75 horses - so even with 13 tons I can stop from 4 knots in a boats lenght (I think!!!) -

Last summer in Morgat - we had such a situation, which involved heading straight at a brand new Sunseeker - owner looked terrified! But afterwards congratulated us on a wonderfull bit of boat handling!!!

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At the end of the day it is better to have a boat that handles well out at sea rather than in a marina is it not?

<hr width=100% size=1>Sail the Se7en seas...
 
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