John, your rudder will be slow to respond until you have enough water moving around it. My guess is by the time you do a loop, you have enough moving water to make your rudder responsive. This allows you to overcome the offset of your outboard. You just have a tight situation in your marina. I don't think you are doing anything wrong other than expecting the helm to react without adequate forward movement. It sounds like you have overcome the issue by doing a loop. Cheers, Mark SF Bay -----Original Message----- From: montgomery_boats-bounces@mailman.xmission.com [mailto:montgomery_boats-bounces@mailman.xmission.com] On Behalf Of John Ledger Sent: Tuesday, April 30, 2013 1:20 PM To: montgomery_boats@mailman.xmission.com Subject: M_Boats: steering M15 with motor I am pretty new at this (this is my first boat) and I am not sure why this happens and am probably doing something very basic wrong. When pulling away from the pier I need to turn immediately to port to go down the row of slips and get out of the marina. Leaving the pier at low speed I push the tiller and motor steering arm to starboard but the boat does not respond - simply does not turn to port - keeps moving forward - slowly. In order to avoid a collision I have to move tiller and motor steering hard to port at which point the boat seems to catch and turn immediately to the starboard - so I end up having to make a very tight loop before I can exit down the row. I have a 4 hp 2 stroke Johnson mounted on the port side of the tiller. I must be missing something. Any thoughts? John, Oregon