I have a stout 4 hp outboard I use in the islands; however when I’m on local reservoirs I use an electric trolling motor because there is less drag. One day the wind came ripping over the dam and I couldn’t get to the dock. Normally I launch and come back to the dock under sail. Not this day. Under power of the electric motor the wind whipped me past the dock and there wasn’t enough power to buck the waves. I started washing up on some rocks when a motorboater rescued me with a tow. Lesson: better timing heading back to the dock with the small motor. Pete M15. 377 Sent from my iPhone
On Mar 9, 2019, at 20:17, Lawrence Winiarski via montgomery_boats <montgomery_boats@mailman.xmission.com> wrote:
I'd be interested in scary-sea-stories about bad weather and passages
Maybe it might help someone who has to face it someday too.
I did deal with about 30 mph winds at night about 9pm and one thing I noticed is that with the sails down, my wimpy 30 lb trolling motor on the M15 could NOT keep the bow pointed into the wind very well and even while I was moving slowly, and if it got off center, or the wind changed, the wind would blow me 180 degrees about and there was virtually nothing i could do about it except gain speed going down wind to get maneuverability with the rudder enough to get head on to the wind again.
If you had large waves to deal with, this could be a pretty big problem, and you wouldn't want to take the sails down, for fear of getting broadsided with lack of maneuverability, but at the same time you don't really want the extra sail area.
The incident, prompted me to add a 2nd reef. Haven't had to try it yet, but it's there for next time. I ended up just anchoring and waiting till 2am when the wind went down some and I could maneuver into the marina
I also experimented with a big drift sock while coming to the slip as a way of slowing myself down as the approach was dead downwind, That worked pretty well and you could use it to steer a little while manuevering between all the other docked expensive sailboats at the marina while coming very carefully downwind with my wimply trolling motor. I ended up with a slow speed 1mph controlled crash into my slip..It was a Clunk and could have woke the neighbors on a still night,but I think with all the wind noise I got away with it.
So I think the drift sock was a useful tool.