Master the wind to master your docking.

welcome to the channel today we're going to talk about wind wind is an element that's always going to be in your life as a sailor if you're boating you need to con be concerned about wind creates Seas anything over 13 knots White Caps will start and that can have an impact on your family outing if you will you may be out and the winds start increasing and you know what's going to happen you know it's it's it's it's going to be a little a little bit more unpleasant so wind direction and wind speed you're always going to want to know what's going on let's talk about boat design for a minute here I'm going to paint with a broad brush most boats have something back here an outboard you have a screw with a Rudder but my point here is is that you've got something going on back here on the bow not so much so this side of the boat is called Sail area and if you think about it it's like a big sale the wind hits this it's going to affect the bow more than it is the stern because you've got all this stuff going on back here and even some some of these bows are even cut off more you know they're they're a shallower bow and that's gonna be affected by the wind more so let's throw a training eight up here when the wind if you go bow in which I highly recommend is is the the your number one approach if you look at this you got wind coming in it goes down boom boom that looks like a Broadhead on an arrow it's it's wind efficient it's also efficient at cutting through the water that's the design of the boat all right but when you turn a little bit you're not going to have anything going down here but this wind is going to hit boom and it's pushing again we said you have gear going here it's going to have a bigger effect up here on your bow now that can be a good thing that can that can help you or it can hurt you it's your choice all right the last one is getting hit from the stern the wind's going to hit boom boom almost almost as good as this if you have your choice number one and number two you really want to keep an eye on that sail area okay let's clean this up I want to tell you a little C story about a friend of mine who's tying up he's tying up his single screwed boat sufficient boat and he has to put this boat in this slip and the wind is coming from this direction well my buddy was always in a habit of coming in and he'd always make the same Loop and he came over and he's he's got to get in here the problem is it's a single screwed boat and the way a single screw works is most of the time there are right-handed screws so when they when they cut the water they cut to the right when you back down it cuts to the left now you the screw is rotating the opposite direction so a single screw boat usually will back to Port so he needs he needs to get in here he needs to but this boat is back in to Port so it's coming here plus he's got the wind blowing him down on the dock and he smashes into this pile I thought he was going to break the pile and he hits the dock he's got everybody else shaken up on the dock and he does it four times finally I came out and I said Maddie go the other way come at this from this direction so he does now is the boat's going to back to Port that's helping it the wind is pushing the bow that's going to help him he he looked like a boss he had that in the very first time because he made friends with the wind he didn't let the wind kick his butt the other direction it was eating his lunch Okay so know where the wind's coming from and have it help you get get what you're doing done I had another buddy another Coast Guard story this is a dock this is called the camel a camel is a a big log usually for ships that um the the ship will lay right alongside of it and it'll ride up and down it's usually on a cable and it keeps you from ending up on the dock or having one of the pylons punched through the the hull of the ship well this happened 25 years ago so this is this is uh definitely burned an impression in my mind my buddy Jack McLaughlin he's still uh he's a civilian employee for the Coast Guard he's a retired coastie he was uh Mooring up docking a 133 foot boy tender he made this approach and he came in can you see this I'm gonna get on the camera here and uh he made a beautiful approach but what he did was he went past it and he just laid the transom or the the quarter of the boat on on the camel close close this controls up said uh put them all over all the lines went over it there was no screaming no yelling no nothing he knew the wind was blowing him on the dock he knew that by touching this this ship was just going to lay right on that Camel everything would would be nice nice and uh man he looked like a boss to the point where I remember it 25 years later hats off to you Jack Okay so use use these to your advantage now if so if you're out here and you've got some current you you've gotten off the dock you're going to hit this thing pretty hard and it's gonna you could knock people down so you want to find that delicate balance you know lay it in here all right next thing about wind I want to go over I see people cruising in the harbor all the time and uh foreign you've got boats that are in their Moorings I mean in their slips and here here comes the boater and he's he's got a strong wind coming across the harbor and they they're acting like they're driving a car but you're not there's no wheels attached wind will affect your boat they come down too close to these and then they realize oh crap I'm getting blown into these boats so what's the natural tendency they want to get over here but what happens on a boat the boat will if you turn to the left this the uh start is going to go to the right you smash into these boats what he should do is if he feels like he's too close bet stop and back out get in good water and do this or pay attention to what the wind's doing to you and not get in that situation in the first place you don't have any wheels on these boats wind definitely effects of all the time all right let's talk about this we want to go to some destination we're going to have we're taking our family and we're starting here okay and this is called the track line it's the way that you're going to get from where you're leaving to where you're going but we've got wind that's blowing like this if you follow down this track line like it was a road you're gonna get blown off your course the wind is hitting this sail area it's hitting the side of your boat and it's having an effect on you even though you don't know it so if you if you follow down it's just going to keep blowing you off of your course the further you go the further off course you're going to get blown so what we end up doing is what we call crabbing you correct your course and you're actually your course made good your bow is pointing here but your course made good is going right down this track line and we'll get into a lot more detail on that when we talk about chart plotters and so on but I want to kind of let you know that that wind if you're going to be a boater wind is in your life you're going to have to deal with wind you can either make it your friend or you can fight it I I will tell you you're going to lose so so give it the respect it's due and uh enact accordingly I have a a app on my phone called Wendy and uh I think it's one of the best ones that I've ever seen I'm sure there's a bunch of other ones out there my old partner on the uh on the sheriff's boat he's an airplane pilot and he uses it for flying so I mean whatever application obviously I think uh the wind has a little bit to do with airplanes too but um wind make a friend of it uh we're stacking this stuff on top of each other we're talking about you know all the videos if you're watching this in sequence we're stacking this stuff up I think you're gonna have a really really good uh next summer if you put some of these things into practice it's gonna it's really gonna make a make boating a lot more fun for you all right the next video is going to be on current another element that's going to uh affect you and you need to keep an eye out uh sometimes current is is uh has more of effect on you than wind you have to figure that out but tune in for the next video I appreciate you stopping by here and watching this and uh we'll see you on the next one thank you

Channel: Boat Training Online

Views: 26,614

Keywords: Boat training online, boat train, boating, boats and wind, docking, docking in high winds, wind

Id: ix6c3Vi2PFE

Length: 12min 21sec (741 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 01 2023