Go Slow and Aim for Something Cheap!

     Or, TURN, boat, oh please TURN … oh dear!

When I bought my first boat, my little 25’ Irwin, I fell in love with her immediately. Even though I knew next to nothing about sailboats at the time, she had one trait I really liked.She was really, really skinny. That, I believed, would make it easier to get in and out of the slip … without hitting anyone else. Hitting another boat was big on my list of things I never, ever wanted to do. In fact, one of the pieces of advice I was given as a beginning sailor was the title of this little essay – “Go slow and aim for something cheap!” Of course, my goal was to aim for open water.

I took someone with me to look at this boat before I bought her, someone who knew a lot more about sailboats than I did. The fact is that for a really cheap sailboat, this boat I ended up naming Silver Girl was really in pretty good shape. Most of the standing rigging was in good shape, she didn’t need a bunch of expensive repairs, and the hull and deck were sound. The centerboard didn’t work, but I was assured that this didn’t really matter. I took her.

The one thing she lacked was an outboard motor. She was designed for an outboard motor, with a cut-down transom. But the man who sold her to me had bought her for the outboard motor. I said to the person with me, “I’m concerned about getting a dependable outboard suitable for a sailboat.” As most of you know, sailboats require longer shafts than an outboard used to push a fishing boat around, and good used ones can be very hard to find. He said, “I know where I can get you one at a good price.”

I had one question about that motor: “Is it reliable?” The answer was yes. He was confident that the engine would be completely reliable. So I took the boat, we borrowed someone’s outboard to move it, and brought it back to BCYC.

As it turns out, different people have different definitions of what “reliable” means. To me, it meant that the engine would start, and keep running until you turn it off. To the person who sold it to me, “reliable” apparently meant, “On the outside, it closely resembles an outboard motor.”

This was an old engine that hadn’t been properly maintained and had to be finessed just to start. As it turned out, the rubber bushing around the propeller was old and worn out. When you first started the engine, the bushing was too hard to do its job and the propeller would not spin, or spin quite ineffectively. Then as the engine warmed up, the rubber warmed up and would bunch up in a couple of places enough to get the propeller spinning enough to actually move the boat. THAT was the time to leave the slip. Unfortunately, if something delayed your exit, the rubber continued to warm, and then it would smooth out – and once again the propeller would not turn effectively.

Unfortunately, to aim for anything – whether it’s the channel out of the marina or “something cheap” – the boat has to be moving. If the boat isn’t moving, you have no steering. On this particular day, I didn’t get out of the slip promptly. As I finally pulled out, that rubber bushing flattened out, and the engine stopped pushing the boat. No steering. Right in front of me, a beautiful million-dollar trimaran from South Africai

The owner really was very gracious about the grapefruit-sized dent my bow pulpit put in his beautiful vessel. I paid him for the damage and a little extra to take his wife out to lunch for his inconvenience.

LESSON LEARNED: you cannot just will a boat to turn. It has to be moving! Don’t waste your money on an old, worn out motor. Just accept that if you’re buying a sailboat that uses an outboard, you need a good outboard motor, or it will fail you, and at the worst possible time. Also, you really want that centerboard to work. It helps the boat go where you want her to go sometimes.