Joe wrote:

.....Guess you have to see
were I dock, wind is funneled between the building that hols the cigar
boats up in slings. So on most spring and summer days we have 10-15
kts wind blowing thru. Hits me broadside going into the slip. The slip
is 45 foot and the boat is 42. My boats a ketch with a 55ft main mast
and a 40 ft mizzen mast so I have lots of windage
to deal with. If I could just coast in and easily stop it would not be
as much an issue.

A sudden gust of wind, especially when it's swirling around buildings or trees, can be pretty
bad. Gives you that "Siezed By A Giant Hand" helpless feeling! One thing I like about the
tugboat is it does not have much windage, but it does have a big skeg, so it does not blow
around easily.


.... I got some
great pictures this fall of a guy with one engine tryong to get in a
slip here on a 45 ft scarab. He got a running backwards start to his
slip missed his slip and went in underneath a boat hanging in the slip
next to his, wiped out his little windsheld and dash. Had to get
another boat to pull him out, he was lucky he did not get killed. Went
and got my camera after his first 4 or 5 tries and knew something
interesting was going to happen.

The guys with the penis boats are almost always funny whenever there is some skill needed... if
they had a clue, they wouldn't want one of those kinds of boats!


Well in MHO bow thruster do not belong on anything under 220 foot. I
ran some supply boats that had bow thrusters and hated listening to
the MF scream and rattle for hours on end as we offloaded.

Is your trawler a single or double screw?

Single. I prefer the fuel economy & lower maintenance, plus there's a lot more room down in the
engine room.

We don't *need* a bow thruster, but if we had one, we would have a wider range of possibilities
with regard to getting in & out of slips and other tight spaces. Right now, I spend some time
looking over the upcoming maneuver carefully, and if it looks too tight (ie a 50% chance or
greater of smacking into a really nice expensive boat) then we turn around and go back to the
T-pier

I had one embarassing moment, when I was turning the boat around in a relatively tight basin,
to come alongside the end of a dock to pick up friends. There was a big expensive yacht
alongside the opposide wall, and a nice lady on board with a British accent watching us
nervously. I figured the wind would blow us away from this big expensive yacht, since it was
from that direction, and to keep from getting hung up on the dock head, I favored the yacht
side a little too much.... there was a swirl of wind that almost pulled us right against that
yacht's gleaming topsides. But we weren't quite into the point of no return, I managed to pick
up our friends with no scrapes or thuds.

Fresh Breezes- Doug King