'Get Home' Outboards

[Marin]

I've never been in that situation but why couldnt you drop the hook that ought to keep u off the rocks?

It all depends on where you are and what the conditions are. I asked my friend why he hadn't considered this option and he said that in that location with the water depth and the almost vertical drop off from shore the boat would have been on the rocks before the anchor could have accomplished anything.

In other locations letting the anchor all the way out can work very effectively to keep you off the shore. The USCG routinely suggests it when talking to boats in this area that have lost power and are drifting toward shore.

 

[bfloyd4445]

It all depends on where you are and what the conditions are. I asked my friend why he hadn't considered this option and he said that in that location with the water depth and the almost vertical drop off from shore the boat would have been on the rocks before the anchor could have accomplished anything.

In other locations letting the anchor all the way out can work very effectively to keep you off the shore. The USCG routinely suggests it when talking to boats in this area that have lost power and are drifting toward shore.

thanks for the reply. I believe then i would have put out a sea anchor to catch the current and use the engine to guide the vessel towards the deepest part which is usually the direction of the main flow

 

[Marin]

thanks for the reply. I believe then i would have put out a sea anchor to catch the current and use the engine to guide the vessel towards the deepest part which is usually the direction of the main flow

We're talking a very narrow pass-- only a few hundred yards--- and very deep and swift water. We're also talking jammed rudders in this particular case. A sea anchor would simply have slightly reduced the force of the impact with which the boat would have hit the rocks.

What might work in one situation will not automatically work in another.

 

[gaunty]

Manyboats

There is such a device as you wish for your outboard.

I had one on the stern too many moons ago to remember exactly. Not sure whether it was proprietary but it was a pantograph type of thing.

Not sure how to describe it. if I new how to draw it I would.

2 upper and lower parallel arms attached to a mounting board which could be locked up high or low spending on the requirement.

I guess the size of the arms and mounting board would be a function of the size weight of the motor

 

[gaunty]

Manyboats,

Have you seen the Garelick mount might be useful for ideas

Here for 20 HP but they seem to have variety of sizes.

http://www.wholesalemarine.com/p/GA...20HP..html?utm_medium=cse&utm_source=shopping

 

[bfloyd4445]

We're talking a very narrow pass-- only a few hundred yards--- and very deep and swift water. We're also talking jammed rudders in this particular case. A sea anchor would simply have slightly reduced the force of the impact with which the boat would have hit the rocks.

What might work in one situation will not automatically work in another.

Well unless i am completely out to lunch then dropping the hook would possibly save the day cause the boat then would be forced in the direction of main flow. With the rudder jammed the skipper had the choice of using the engine<s> to swing the stern either starboard or port depending upon gear selection, reverse or forward. I single hand much of my boating cause i tend to push the envelope but if you had a crew there would be other options available. One could add more ground takle either from the bow or stern allowing even more control with the reverse/forward hard port or starboard engines. I'm sure all of you with vastly more trawler experiance than I can see even more ways to manuvere this vessel with jammed rudders but operating engines.

All this depends upon the skipper haveing made sure there was ample ground tackle aboard.

rest my case

 

[jeffnick]

Thank you.
We in general myself included tend to over kill everything. There is no need for a zillion horse power unless one has a desire to support the oil industry in most applications. I did much experimentation with my last searay and what i learned was that for best economy i needed to run at 3,000rpm 32-4 mph or displacement speed of 900-1200rpm at about 6-7mph. At those two points i used the least fuel per statute mile with the displacement fuel economy being the better by far of the two. Well, when i sold my lasst ray i left the log book in here so cannot list here the exact numbers. What i can say is that puttin along is the best for ride quality and fuel economy however i found it impossible to putt in a almost 55mph boat that felt so good when she was boiling water.

I also found that my dinghy motor would propel my ray with little effort at 2-3mph. If i opened up the little motor she would boil lots of water but no speed gain was evident.

But it was so neat to push her to about 4grand and feel her take a bite of the water handling as light as a feather with instant responce...YAHOOO!!!!!!!!

I occasionally crew on a 29 Sundancer. I installed a Floscan on it...just under and just over 'plowing' gave the same mpg...for him, no economical reason not to get her on step....but tor me, smelling the roses is preferable.

 

[bfloyd4445]

I occasionally crew on a 29 Sundancer. I installed a Floscan on it...just under and just over 'plowing' gave the same mpg...for him, no economical reason not to get her on step....but tor me, smelling the roses is preferable.

yep, but throttle back till the bow stops trying to climb and you will see a slight increase in economy. But like you i most often opted to pay the extra cost and run at 3,000rpm. The 270 Da i had may be a bit diferent than a 29 da or sundancer.

 

[Nomad Willy]

gaunty,
Thank you very much for finding that link and posting it. It is not what I seek though. The one I want slides over tubes over 2'.

TC ALERT

 

[Marin]

Well unless i am completely out to lunch then dropping the hook would possibly save the day cause the boat then would be forced in the direction of main flow. :

You are completely out to lunch. As I said, what will work in one situation will not work in another. You have no idea of this particular pass, of this boat, or of the conditions that were being faced. The "main current" in this case is not the theoretical, nice Chapman's illustration of a current in a channel. The main current in this case sweeps thing into rocks and up against the base of the cliffs. The owner used his powerful Boston Whaler in an attempt to do exactly what you describe but the current was carrying both vessels toward the rocks and the cliff.

You can Monday morning quarterback this all you like with your imagined "what i would do" ideas but the reality is you have no clue what you would do because you're not faced with the same situation in the same place under the same conditions as this particular very experienced Inside Passage boater was.

 

[bfloyd4445]

You can Monday morning quarterback this all you like with your imagined "what i would do" ideas but the reality is you have no clue what you would do because you're not faced with the same situation in the same place under the same conditions as this particular very experienced Inside Passage boater was.

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Marin, u r doing the same thing. Why would your monday morning quarterbacking be any better than mine or anyone elses? I understand that someone like you that spends his boating time going from one nice secure port to another may no lots about monday night quarterbacking but that aint me, I'm the guy out there in the line taking the punches and learning. Each and every case is different and the only people that know for sure are the ones thereat the time. The discussion was about what options may have been available at the time to the skipper of the vessel not what he/she should have done.
And, for your information i have been in situations as you describe in rivers but always the current would change to parallel the shore as water cannot flow up cliffs. That wasn't the case i envisioned i thought that the current was flowing towards a narrows as depicted in your pictures with shallow areas next to the main channel and i was thinking of what could be done to direct the boat towards the deeper channel. Since there was no mention of wind i did not take that into consideration.
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[Marin]

I'm not Monday-morning-quarterbacking anything (I don't think). I simply described what my friend did. And explained why he did it. And if you believe that a current can't propel a boat into rocks and a cliff then you have a lot to learn about currents.

BTW I don't recall posting any pictures of this particular situation. My friend was a wee bit busy to take any and I wasn't there.

To my mind, an option isn't an option if it's known beforehand that it isn't going to work. This was the case with the options you mentioned--- dropping an anchor, deploying a sea anchor, and so on. None of these would have worked in this particular situation, my friend knew it, so he focused on the one thing he could do that might work in the few minutes he had to try something. And, as it turned out, that option didn't work either. But it was the only one that had a chance of working.

Sure, you can speculate all you want on what you would have done. We all do that. But the point here is that none of the things one would think might have worked, would have worked. In other words, it's a lessons learned thing.

What I learned is that an outboard, even a fairly powerful one, is not always the ticket out of a tight spot if a boat's primary propulsion system is disabled.

It may be most of the time, perhaps, but depending on where you boat, there may be situations when it won't do any good. Which tells me that if I'm going to boat in one of those areas I had better be prepared to deal with whatever might get thrown at me, which means an outboard get-home-motor may not be a viable solution.

What IS a viable option in these situations is a second engine under the floor. It's ironic that in the example I gave the boat was, in fact, a twin. And it was disabled because of a log jamming the rudders, not because both drivelines were taken out of commission (one of them was).

So.... had the boat been a single and if it had lost its only engine or driveline in exactly the same spot under exactly the same conditions, its operator would have been facing the exact same situation my friend did. And, as he proved, an outboard of the size most people have on their cruisers for dinghy use would not have saved the day.

A second engine under the floor would.

That's the only point of all this and is the topic of the thread---- is an outboard a viable get home engine for a cruiser?

 

[MurrayM]

Well, if we consider the total number of minutes per year where an outboard could in some way be helpful in getting to the nearest safe location after the main engine fails, to the total number of minutes per year when one might be in the confines of cliff bound narrows during fast flow where no options are of any use...I'll still go with the outboard...especially on our size of boat.

 

[Marin]

For your situation with your boat it sounds like the best solution. For ours with our boat (if it was a single engine boat) it would not be. Fortunately it's not something we have to consider.

 

[MurrayM]

In a past life (as in several decades ago) I was into rock climbing. It always amazed me how some people would think nothing of rappelling on a drop forged aluminum figure eight device with no prusik for back-up, or of any way to ascend the rope if they had to. All it would take is a hairline crack in the figure eight and it would mean cratering for sure.

It seems equally crazy to boat in isolated waters without a back-up means to at least get to a safe anchorage, especially in the deep fjord like channels where we live.

 

[markpierce]

Having a "buddy boat" to accompany one's voyage is also an option. Boating with interesting people is worthwhile and can ease the cooking chores. Cooking for four is about as easy as cooking for two.

 

[Marin]

Mark-- I could tell you about our sailboat friends who experienced a cooling pump failure and their friends came alongside in their sailboat and side tied to tow them back to harbor and the winds suddenly swept in with big (for the area) waves and the two boats bashed together doing considerable damage until they could cut them apart, at which point our friend's boat was adrift and was pulled away from the rocks they were being blown onto by the Canadian Coast Guard who got a line to them minutes before they went onto the rocks as an example about how a buddy boat may not be of any help.

But I won't since this didn't happen to me and is therefore not a credible example.

 

[markpierce]

Marin, there are no absolute guarantees (like flotsam can wipe out both propellers/shafts). And I know you already knew that.

 

[FF]

example about how a buddy boat may not be of any help.

and the winds suddenly swept in

Did not they have sails, on their sail boat?

 

[MurrayM]

Did not they have sails, on their sail boat?

Good one.

As an aside; I read a story years ago about this couple who built a traditional sailing junk from beachcombed wood, and who sailed it for decades all over the BC coast by sail alone...no motor of any kind at all was on the vessel. Considering how complex the topography is and how that effects winds above the water and tidal currents below it, I was mightily impressed!

 

[sunchaser]

Buddy boat? I don't think that two weak sisters is the answer to very many problems, especially the one posed by Murray. A get home engine (or twins) is common throughout the pleasure boating world for those of us without adequate spare parts coverage and an Engineer or capable mechanic onboard to fix the more difficult issues as they arise.

The question is vessel specific and not too complicated once you get out on the water -- for a single engine smaller vessel, will a trolling motor get you out of most (but not all) trouble? To me the answer is yes. I have fished with a trolling OB 9.9 HP motor, on a 30' twin diesel boat, that included its own hydraulic steering system. In seas where the up and down on the transom was less than about 2 feet and winds no more than moderate it worked pretty good. More weather than that we simply went around the point to calmer waters. To steer this vessel with the trolling motor in narrow passage tidal currrents of say more than 2 knots it would be of little use, at best.

 

[bfloyd4445]

To my mind, an option isn't an option if it's known beforehand that it isn't going to work. This was the case with the options you mentioned--- dropping an anchor, deploying a sea anchor, and so on. None of these would have worked in this particular situation, my friend knew it, so he focused on the one thing he could do that might work in the few minutes he had to try something. And, as it turned out, that option didn't work either. But it was the only one that had a chance of working.

science teaches us that one never knows what will happen untill it is tried. U may think u do but the results are seldom as you evision. I have spent a lifetime preforming good science that must stand up to the scrutiny of the scientific community, the courts, and i learned early on never to rule out anything untill it has been tried. The results often surprise you

 

[sunchaser]

bfloyd4445 said:

"science teaches us that one never knows what will happen untill it is tried."

Precisely! So please floyd, buy your DeFever and try out the narrow rock strewn PNW passages and report back. Nothing like a slow heavy boat to start learning this narrow passage strong current stuff. Experiences from a SeaRay are not relevant to traversing Dodd Narrows, Seymour Narrows, Wrangell Narrows or Dent Rapids in a slow trawler.

 

[crowleykirk]

Our 9.9 kicker has saved us from disaster on a rocky lee shore at least twice - when kelp had blocked the water intakes and caused the main to overheat. Also brought us back 12 miles or so twice after engine or sterndrive problems, once from part way up into Glacier Bay. And once when steering let go right in the crowded Hartley Bay harbor, with other boats only yards away.

We could have been saved by a tow in only two of these situations. After 40,000 nm cruising, I've had enough such adventures to really love my kicker. Oh, and it's great for salmon trolling.

i do make sure my kicker is running well at the beginning and end of every summer cruise, and I use it frequently through the summer. Basic maintenance is simple but important. Every time we really needed it in a hurry our kicker started right away.

First one was a Suzuki 9.9 2-stroke, and our current one is a Yamaha 9.9 hi-thrust 4-sroke. The Suz moved our CD 22 at 6 knots, and handled the ups and down in the giant waves I mentioned in the other thread. The Yam moves our heavy 26-footer only 4 knots, so we can't always make it against the currents up north. But we can get over to the side and get out of the stronger flow, or stay safe until current lessens. Did that in Glacier Bay.

I just replaced my raise/lower type kicker bracket, worn out after 10+ years (and many miles bouncing along the roads), with a newer and much beefier one. It's WM's sturdiest, rated for up to 170 lb. List $400. Vertical travel 15.5" IIRC. It seems to be much the same as Garelick's sturdiest.

A C-Dory isn't exactly a trawler. Folks here a talking trawlers I believe. I agree with you, we once had a C-Dory 23 Venture with a 9.9 Zuk and it worked awesome!