Macblaze said: "...remember to take the bloody
boat out of
gear when you hop off..."
Quite! But let's expand on that: MOST 35 footers, when in "forward gear", will move at two knots with the
engine idling. That is FAR too fast for docking!!
So what to do? WELL before you get close to anything hard, like a
dock, select "idle", then "neutral" (in that sequence for the sake of the transmission).
Then let the
boat run off her speed until she's going at the speed you want, say a half
knot. From then on you control the speed with the
GEAR SHIFT, leaving the RPMs at "idle" all the time. If the boat is moving too slowly, you give her a dab of "forward" on the
transmission. Just for long enuff that she's back up to the half
knot. Then you select "neutral" again. And so on, again and again, till you've gotten from where you were to where you want to go.
So how do you know when you are going half a knot? Easy. Just do the math at home. And then remember it!
I'm gonna do it for you now :-). One "knot" is one nautical mile per hour, i.e. it is 6076 feet per hour and "half a knot" is therefore 3038 feet per hour, or a tad over fifty feet per minute, which is a little less than a foot a second.
But spurious accuracy is the sailorman's bane, so in practice it means that if you can can count "one elephant, two elephant.....thirty elephant" while your 35 foot boat passes by a fixed point, stem to stern, you are going "half a knot".
Practice that sort of stuff out in
English Bay. Heave your life ring over board to use as the fixed point. You can always pick it up again as you pass by it by glomming it with your boat hook when you've finished the exercise.
And remember: For someone homeported in False Creek, sailing is the least of it.
Learning to handle the boat under
power is FAR more important. So forget about sailing for now, and go out into the bay and practice, practice, practice handling the boat under
power.
Sez I, having taught sailing out of False Creek for many a year, and out of Coal Harbour long before that, way back before they forbade sailing "between the
bridges".
All the best
TrentePieds