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Old 08-19-2015, 03:44 PM   #10
Marin
Scraping Paint
 
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Join Date: Oct 2007
Posts: 13,745
While this may work with some twins, it's been our experience with ours that it doesn't work at all. Not if what's being talked about is moving the boat straight sideways as though it had bow and stern thrusters. The boat can be "walked" sideways easy enough, but not moved straight sideways. (This is assuming that the boat does not have a bow thruster but is being moved and directed by the props and rudders alone.

This came up in a discussion years ago with friends at an island we used to visit a lot. The husband had been a fantastic boat handler in the USCG (he is still the best boat handler I have ever met) and he was sure that a twin could be moved straight sideways using the techniques described earlier in this thread. I'd tried them with no success but he is far better at maneuvering than I was then.

No luck at all. He tried everything he could think of and in the end he said it's impossible. The boat can be made to move straight sideways for couple of feet, but that's just until the forces at play take over and one end or the other starts moving to the side faster than the other.

Now in a twin with very widely spaced props like a Great Harbor it might be possible because of the leverage that can be exerted by the props. But in a boat like ours, with the props fairly close-in to the keel, not gonna happen.

Again, it can be walked sideways very easily: move the bow over, then move the stern over, then the bow, and so on. My dog can do that. Blindfolded. But straight sideways? No way. The physics simply aren't conducive to it.

And FWIW, I have yet to meet a twin operator who has claimed and demonstrated he/she could do it, either, at least not with their boat.
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