Suggestions for backing up

[matt]

Throttle and Rudder, throttle and rudder

One point to make is that all too often I see boats trying to "ease" their way into slips with only minimal throttle and rudder movement in effort to do things slowly. Don't! You will only make things worse....Fully use the throttle and rudder!! I mean gun it and flip that rudder around to your advantage. If you get too close to the finger pier while backing up into your slip, then flip the rudder in the complete other direction (I mean until it just won't go any farther) and put it in forward. This will kick the stern out away from the dock and then proceed with backing in. You can even move you boat completely sideways if you can quickly switch between f/w and reverse (while issuing healthy doses of throttle) and fully using (I'm usually spinning the wheel) the rudder. My father-in-law used to pilot boats for the Army and taught me how to fully use the throttle and rudder, and it is the reason I get so many compliments on docking now! I often have people run over to help with dock lines and respectfully tell them not to bother. All too often people on the dock tend to try to pull the boat away from you - they mean well, but... ;-) Don't timidly ease it in, go for it! You will be surprised at how well you can control your boat in close quarters.matt

 

[Dan McGuire]

Sorry Greg

Head up and locked. What is stupid about my question is that I read your comments several times trying to figure out what I was missing. All I can think is I looked at "idle" and thought that means "not moving".

 

[Roger (Ninette Manitoba)]

perhaps I am mistaken

but idle to me is that you can see the individual blades of the prop turning, if I had to guess, it would be 500 rpm or less. As indicated before in reverese, this prop walk will move your stern to port, without much reverse movement. If you have just given a burst of forwart throttle, then idle in reverse, you move forward slowly and the stern again walks to port.In the 'old days'... really old days... you would only dock your boat on the port side, as the steerboard (read starboard) was on the right hand quarter of the boat, and would tangle with the dock. We are talking roman times here. These are the original derivations of the terms port and starboard. Of course they did not have motors or props back then so 'port prop walk' was a move of the future.