THE BOATAHOLIC
Nick Burnham: “The ever obliging Sue, always up for a mad boating scheme, volunteered. It worked brilliantly, her husband Matt even got some photos with his iphone!”
For various reasons I ran out of time to antifoul my boat this year, so I asked a local marine engineer. He did a terrific job – far more thorough than I usually do, he even removed the bow thruster and painted inside the prop tunnel and the thruster prop. It was an almost perfect job…
This is the first boat I’ve owned with a bow thruster. It’s not something I’d have chosen to fit on a boat of this size but since it’s there, I always switch it on prior to berthing and check it’s operational with a quick flick of the joystick. And it does come in handy occasionally. A few weeks after launch, heading into harbour, I gave it a flick only to be rewarded with a noise like a high-speed drill instead of the distinctive grinding cavitation that all thrusters make. Clearly, although the motor was spinning, the propeller wasn’t. Or the propeller was missing.
After concocting all sorts of clever ideas to check, involving boat hooks (someone else’s, I deliberately don’t carry one), cable ties and Gopro cameras, I realised that the easiest way was simply to pop the boat onto the plane with someone tight alongside in another boat to take a look. The ever obliging Sue, always up for a mad boating scheme, volunteered. It worked brilliantly, her husband Matt even got some photos with his iphone!
I sent one to my engineer expecting the usual deflection, excuses and reasons why it was definitely nothing to do with him. I’ve come across a fair few of these sort over the years and my policy when encountering them is never to argue
(life is too short) but never ever to use them again. Instead I got an immediate apology, an assurance that he’d get a new thruster prop on order and organise a crane lift to fit it once it had arrived. There are some decent people out there after all!
In the meantime I went boating bow-thruster free. And it was quite liberating. I keep thruster use to an absolute minimum anyway; I regard excessive use as a badge of someone who’s just not very good at boating. The same applies to leaving the fenders hanging down the sides – very poor form; boating with all the canopies up on a hot summer’s day – it must be roasting in there; using a boat hook – something has gone wrong if someone needs to wield a boathook; and putting the boat name on the bow – it’s just wrong. That should do it, or is there anyone left who I haven’t managed to upset yet?
Don’t get me wrong, a bow thruster is there to make life easier, so by all means use it but it should be your ‘get out of jail’ card when things aren’t quite working out, not grinding noisily away and letting the whole world know you’re approaching while still 30ft off the berth. I once saw a man rotate his boat 180° in the fairway just using his bow thruster!
So my advice is, get back to basics and get used to boating without it – just use it for a final tweak if you need it. At least then if the prop ever decides to make a break for freedom your boating won’t be curtailed for the lack of it.