‘Seamanship is the art of operating a ship or boat’
Each week Boating Downunder TV will feature an aspect of seamanship that will help you learn how to operate your boat safely and with confidence. If you ever need to be entertained, go down to your local boat ramp on a summer’s weekend and watch the goings on as people launch and retrieve their boats. Boat ramps are a hotbed of entertainment where tempers fray and unskilled boaties make the most basic, comical and often expensive, mistakes.
Some of the common problems are; boats sinking after beng launched without their bungs fitted; boats being backed down ramps with their outboard motors in the down position, grinding the skeg down as it scrapes on the ramp ripple strips; backing operations being attempted multiple times because the owner can’t reverse his or her boat down a narrow ramp lane.
To be fair, many of these incidents have happened to most of us at some time, (you only forget your bungs once!) but experience is hard won if done by trial and error. In this segment of the show, Boating Downunder’s seamanship expert, Tim Warner, will give you some great advice and simple tips to help you avoid embarrassment, damage to your boat, or something much worse.
Spring Lines – What are they?
How to use them.
Many people, especially new power boat owners, assume that operating a boat is much the same as drivng a car. It goes forward, it goes backward and it’s got a steering wheel. There couldn’t be anything further from truth. A boat has no brakes and operates on the most difficult type of road imaginable; a road that is not flat, is incredibly slippery and has a mind of its own to push your little vessel in every direction but the one you want to go in. These difficulties are never more apparent than when the boat is approaching a wharf.
