{"id":728,"date":"2018-04-23T10:00:46","date_gmt":"2018-04-23T17:00:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/198.171.78.101\/wordpress\/?p=728"},"modified":"2024-06-12T10:16:21","modified_gmt":"2024-06-12T17:16:21","slug":"downwind-slip-skippers-tip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tradewindssailing.com\/wordpress\/skippers-tip\/downwind-slip-skippers-tip\/","title":{"rendered":"Downwind Slip Skipper’s Tip!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Got the blues leaving the downwind slips?<\/strong><\/p>\n

With the onset of summer and the steady winds, we’ve seen a few close calls in the fairway. This looks like a great time to publish a docking skipper’s tip!<\/p>\n

When backing out of a downwind slip (wind is blowing into the slip), our Tradewinds acronym L.O.T. is absolutely critical.<\/p>\n

L<\/strong>ocation – should be the far side of the fairway from your slip – as far upwind from the slip as you can safely be.<\/p>\n

O<\/strong>rientation – the boat should be as close to perpendicular to the slip (bow is pointed down the fairway) as possible before we make our…<\/p>\n

T<\/strong>ransition – transition to forward motion (motion, not gear – the gear change happens while we are still moving backward, and we need to remember to steer based on the direction of motion, not the gear we are in!) should be accomplished with enough forward throttle and rudder adjustment to keep the boat pointed in the right direction. Stronger wind will require more throttle and\/or rudder to accomplish this, while in light winds we can use very little of either and do fine.<\/p>\n

Here are some diagrams to help with the explanation (click them for a larger view):<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/td>\n\"\"<\/a><\/td>\n\"\"<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
In this image, our L<\/strong>ocation is great – the safer, upwind side of the fairway. Unfortunately, our O<\/strong>rientation is not good (our bow is pointed at the docks). Since our boat steers from the stern, we can’t get our bow around before the wind takes us back to the other side of the fairway and into the docks. If we find ourself in position 3<\/strong> above, we should consider driving back into the slip and starting over rather than trying to make the difficult T<\/strong>ransition and turn against the wind forcing our bow down.<\/td>\nIn this image, our O<\/strong>rientation is good (bow pointed in the right direction), but we’ve already made a large mistake in our L<\/strong>ocation (the downwind side of the fairway). Making the T<\/strong>ransition from postion 3 <\/strong>is a bad idea and will result in being blown back into the docks. If we are in this position, the safest way to attempt recovery is to continue to back with enough speed to steer to the upwind side of the fairway in reverse before making our T<\/strong>ransition to forward motion.<\/td>\nIn this example, we are L<\/strong>ocated on the safe, upwind side of the fairway, our O<\/strong>rientation is in the correct direction, perpendicular to the docks (bow pointed down the fairway), and we have plenty of room and time to make a smooth T<\/strong>ransition to forward motion and exit the docks. Well done!<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Got the blues leaving the downwind slips? With the onset of summer and the steady winds, we’ve seen a few close calls in the fairway. This looks like a great time to publish a docking skipper’s tip! When backing out … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7,6],"tags":[24,26,25,58],"class_list":["post-728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-club","category-skippers-tip","tag-docking","tag-downwind","tag-fairway","tag-skippers-tip"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tradewindssailing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tradewindssailing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tradewindssailing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tradewindssailing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tradewindssailing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=728"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.tradewindssailing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3579,"href":"https:\/\/www.tradewindssailing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728\/revisions\/3579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tradewindssailing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tradewindssailing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tradewindssailing.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}