THE USE OF THRUSTERS ON SMALL BOATS
Small, shallow draft motorboats with light to moderate displacements are responsive, rewarding and great fun to drive at high average cruising speeds.
But throttle back inside a tightly fitting marina at the end of a long day, perhaps with a springtide flowing and blustery wind to contend with, and these erstwhile pleasant handling characteristics can rapidly change your impression about ‘so-called’ easy-handling small boats.
If you factor in a high topside to wetted surface area ratio – a common occurrence with some cabin boats – then little more than a mild gust can turn your boat into a cork, or a plastic cup, bobbing about on the sea, with little or no resistance against the elements.
Other circumstances, such as not having much deck or cockpit space for your crew to move around on, or mooring up within a marina that has small length finger pontoons making it difficult for crew to step off and tie up lines, are further reasons why fitting a small, but powerful and controllable, bow thruster to a small boat, makes as much sense as it does fitting one to a larger boat.
Mounted low down in the hull and as far forward as the boat’s design will allow, an efficient tunnel bow thruster will pay you back in more ways than one.
Not only will this little tool boost your own self-confidence when the weather gods conspire against you, but the overall satisfaction of knowing that almost anyone amongst the crew, with or without much previous boating experience, will be able to moor and park the boat confidently, without fear or drama, is a nice feeling to have.
The same parking and close-quarter dilemma applies to sub-30ft sailing yachts, as much as for small motorboats, and more and more sailors are specifying Side-Power quiet and discreet tunnel or external-pod thrusters as retro-fits to their yachts.
Last, but not least, any yacht broker will tell you the benefits of the re-sale/residual value of a used boat fitted with a thruster and it will sell on far more easily when time for a change.
Upgrading to speed control
When conditions are less challenging, Side-Power’s proportional-control Pro Version upgrade is a great idea for controlling the RPM (and perceived noise) of bow or stern thrusters, so that you can start off slow and increase or decrease thrust with finger-tip control. By avoiding a ‘full-on, full-off’ effect, using less thruster output means you do not have to think about available battery power and can enjoy continuous run-time if used at speeds of less than 50 per cent available power.
General Manager of Sleipner Motor Ltd is Bryn Thomas, an experienced and well-known face behind the Side-Power brand, and many will have seen and may have spoken to him when manning the Sleipner boat show stands.
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