Lessons in safe boat handling

I will never forget the second time I helmed a motor boat larger than twenty-odd feet. The Boss asked me to park a Princess V48 in the crane for a lift-out. The boat being equipped with twin shafts as well as both bow- and stern thrusters, I didn't worry much about the five inches of clearance to the lifting hooks, and approached it in a state of serene calm. This was soon to change.


I fired up the twin Volvos and cast off the mooring lines with the remote rumble throbbing underfoot. The stern line was last to go, and I pushed with my full weight against the pontoon from the swim platform. Slowly, the considerable weight of the boat set into motion, and I strolled up to the helm. There was no detectable trace of current, not a breath of wind to disturb the stern's steady progress away from the pontoon, and everything seemed just right until I pressed the bow thruster control. Nothing at all happened.

Concerned, I gave the stern thruster control a tentative prod to see if I could get back to the pontoon and resolve the issue safely. No such luck. In an instant, the prospect ahead changed dramatically. How would I be able to steer straight between those heavy, sharp, unforgiving lifting hooks and stop the boat without yawing? I couldn't tell as I started the procedure, and the ensuing drama was... well, interesting. Suffice it to say, I caused a massive productivity hit for the neighboring heavy industry as all the workers were standing by the fence, watching The Boss having a near heart attack. Somehow, the Princess came away from it all unscathed, mostly due to my luck.

From this I gleaned a valuable lesson, which came to be my First Golden Rule of safe boat handling: When taking control of a boat you don't know intimately, ALWAYS test all mission critical systems before casting off.


Fast forward three years, and this experience has saved me many times over as I'm taking delivery of my current home, a Steel Lady 43. The day has been one long, mad rush to get all the paperwork in order, sort out all the little niggles, and make her ready for her first voyage in over three years after only a short maneuverability test two days previously. It is darkening, the tidal current is starting to pick up, and in all the stress and commotion my golden rule fades to the glimmering figment of a memory and flutters away in the offshore breeze.


My wife is in the dinghy, motoring slowly out of the harbor as I cast off the mooring lines. Finally, the stress of the day is loosening its grip, easing with the promise of being under way. Getting away from the dock is the easiest maneuver in the book: Stick the transmission in gear, wait for the wind to carry the bow out to a suitable angle, add a couple of inches of propeller pitch, and proceed forward, out the harbor entrance.


Everything goes according to plan until I hit the button to add forward pitch. The expected rumble of tip vortices transmitting themselves through the steel plating of the hull, is completely absent. There is also a conspicuous lack of forward motion. Thinking I must have forgotten one of the myriad of switches, my eyes scan the dashboard for clues. PTO hydraulics look good. The pitch indicator is moving. Gear oil pressure is 5 bar... that's clutch pressure only. My first realization is that the small amount of oil I've spotted in the exhaust wasn't from one of the turbos, after all. My second realization is that I'm in deep trouble. Again, I have one of those perspective changing moments. I am no longer the master of a motorboat cruising through a spacious harbor basin, but the responsible passenger of 22 tons of jagged steel, drifting at an alarming rate towards rows of gleaming, fragile hullsides.


I run outside and look out to sea. My wife has just powered over the dinghy's bow wave, and is moving away at a rate of about twenty knots. Completely forgetting about the gargantuan air horn mounted on the coachroof, I whistle through my teeth, so loud it hurts my own ears. Her head turns a fraction. I whistle again, even louder, and she turns around in her seat to see me jumping up and down, arms flailing. She powers through a 180 degree turn, comes flying through the harbor entrance and drops down with a precision splash right beside me. She then gently nudges the bow of the dinghy up to my hull side, and applies 25 Tohatsu horsepower to push me back to the dock. Her positioning is so perfect that I don't have to move the boat at all in order to slip the springs over the bollards.


This time around I was saved not by my own luck, but by my wife handling the situation so magnificently that you would think she'd spent her whole life as a tug captain (for the record, she is a motorcycle mechanic, and hardly knew what a boat was until she met me). Maybe my pride at this will assist in maintaining my First Golden Rule, so I may never have to learn this again.