Last Wednesday night we had just tied up our friend's trawler we'd taken out for a spin when a 42'+ sailboat was coming in two slips up, and coming in fast. It was just the skipper and one guy who was at the stern with the skipper. I ran over to grab the bow dock lines (there were none ready!!) and the skipper was NOT slowing down. I yelled* "REVERSE! REVERSE!" Skipper casually replied "I lost my reverse". The bow rode up on the dock and came out of the water a good two feet. Once we got the boat stopped the skipper said "oh I'm in the wrong slip". I won't go into the comedy of him and his one crew trying to use dock lines to leverage the boat back out of the wrong slip and make a U turn to back into the new one. Suffice it to say my husband and I took pity on them and helped them. Plus their correct slip it next to our friend's trawler to we wanted to look out for him!*we have a "no yelling while docking" policy unless bodily harm, death, or severe property damage is imminent. I was holding on to the guy's bow pulpit so I was somewhat concerned about bodily harm to myself but more that he was going to take out the dock or the dock box, or put a hole in his bow!
Since this story is out of context and not all my readers are boaters, I will explain a little about docking a boat. Have you ever struggled to park you car in a narrow spot, where maybe the cars in the adjacent spots are really close to the lines? That is what getting a boat into a slip with docks on each side is like. You have maybe a foot of clearance on each side and you are trying to slot a 40+ foot (at least in our case) boat into it. So not only is it like trying to get a car into a narrow spot but it is not just a matter of turning at the right angle to not hit the neighboring cars. You have wind and current influencing the speed and direction of the boat AND you have no brakes. The only thing you can do to slow down is shift into reverse, but doing so also changes the direction of the boat--oh I have to explain THAT to.
Ok so in a car, you turn the steering wheel, it turns the wheels, the car turns. In a boat, you turn the wheel, it turns the rudder and the rudder attempts to move the boat the way you turned the wheel BUT as I mentioned you also have the force of the wind and current. There is another factor that comes into play in reverse and that is the force of the water that is being moved by the propeller. The effect is called "prop walk" and it causes the boat to want to back up in a particular direction (based on which way the propeller spins) regardless of which way the rudder is turned. You have to factor in prop walk into your planning for any maneuver that involves backing up.
If you are not a boater you are probably now thoroughly confused. So imagine again that you are trying to park in that really narrow parking space and you are driving a big SUV on a really windy day and you are being pushed by the wind into one of the cars next to as you try to turn in. So you throw the car from forward into reverse to try to correct and instead your car starts going the opposite direction from where you want (but at least you slowed down) so you ask your spouse to hop out of the car and push you away from the car you are being blown into. Can you imagine that you and your spouse might be a little tense and be inclined to yell? Thus we have the no yelling rule. Yelling really doesn't help, it just escalates the tension. Unless someone is going to die! Then you need to get the skipper's attention.
And as I learned so many years ago from Bryan Jones, my horse back riding instructor, "you can't steer if you aren't moving". You can't solve this problem by coming in super slow and thinking you are going to be oh so careful and slide it in just right. If you aren't moving forward, the boat is not going to respond when you turn the wheel and the wind and current are going to take over. Even though most marinas are protected by a "breakwater" there is still wind and current inside the marina! All in all docking can be quite exciting!
I hope this gives you a little taste of what this yachting stuff is like. :) It is not all sunsets and margaritas.
No comments:
Post a Comment