Training the wife

[SimonX]

arrived opened up the boat to find the cockpit littered with bear

Buggers, aren’t they?

 

[SimonX]

Part of that was a telephone box. We blagued one off the phone co. And planted it in the marina. Biggest prob was keeping assorted peeps from wanting to make calls..

I believe the they had the same problem when filming the movie Local Hero. The phone box used is fake, the real one is in a different location

 

[oldmanofthehills]

View attachment 204515

I think the Husband needs recalibrating. He wont get boat out of the pontoon spot until he gets the shore lines off, starting with the bows

 

[LittleSister]

On the last bit, short bursts of power ahead whilst the engine being in neutral more is much more effective. In board and outboard engines. Propwash over rudder.

Good idea to see which way the engine will walk the stern whilst hoping astern too.

These two things are pretty much the first lessons on boat handling. . .

I agree that short bursts of ahead works well on a 'modern' shaped boat with the rudder reasonably close behind the prop.

Useful propwash over rudder effect was absent, sadly, from my three outboard powered boats, all of which had the outboard behind the rudder, two of which had (like Wansy's Dufour 24, I believe) transom mounted outboards offset from the centreline.

Negligible prop-wash effect, too, on my inboard powered long-keeler. The traditional steeply raked barn-door transom-hung rudder was behind the prop alright, but when you put the rudder over the prop was facing not the rudder foil, but the prop cut-out hole! Any quick blast just shot straight through that without sideways kick, and a gentler more general continuous flow over the rudder seemed most effective to me on that boat.

I was thrilled to be taught, years ago, how to turn a conventional boat (Contessa 32, since you ask) in only a foot or two more than its LOA using prop-walk and alternating blasts of forward and reverse, but I couldn't do that on any of the boats mentioned above.

 

[LittleSister]

I think the Husband needs recalibrating. He wont get boat out of the pontoon spot until he gets the shore lines off, starting with the bows

That's the trouble with male skippers these days: they just don't shout loud enough!

 

[Bouba]

That's the trouble with male skippers these days: they just don't shout loud enough!

Not on my boat....I yell at seagulls....