Docking skills
Hey Keiffer, your bowsprit looks great! I would love to hear more about your thought process, what wood you used, solid vs laminate etc.
We haven't done a whole lot lately (weather here in PDX has been very UNspringlike) but we did motor her to our marina. It was ~6.5 miles and would have been a nice trip except for the weather, we had a pretty cold rain most of the way.
Getting her out of the slip at the yard moorage was interesting. Our slip was perpendicular to the current and to get out we had to get the stern to swing upstream. It was pretty tight maneuvering (it felt like it anyway), we had a little under 1 boat length of room behind us and a boat in the slip next to us on the downstream side. First we tried to back out with rudder to port (upstream) with me at the helm and Devon on the dock with bowline to prevent the bowsprit from getting too close to our neighbor. That didn't work, the boat just went straight back and we didn't have enough room to clear the neighbor to turn downstream. We tried a few times but could not get the stern to swing upstream. What finally worked was having Devon pull on the stern line from the dock to get the stern to swing upstream (he also had the bowline to prevent us from hitting the neighbor) while I backed out with rudder to port. At least we didn't have a big audience (I guess the bad weather was good for something).
I know the E31 is not easy to maneuver in reverse but if anybody has any tips or pointers I would love to hear them. Fortunately we have a little more room at our marina but we still need to back out (or back in I suppose but I'm sure that would be worse).
