Slow speed help

[sweetwater]

Ok, so this is the second season with my 05 flush deck 28. I love everything about the boat EXCEPT the fact that it needs two football fields to turn around in. It had the rudder cut by standish prior to me buying it. There are several other single inboards by me and they seem to turn much much tighter. One is a 31 bhm and another a 35 henriques. Should I go back to the other rudder? Is there a way to get this boat to turn better at slow speed. I try bursts of power, back / fill and it all works to a degree. Just seems I have nowhere near enough rudder. It really limits where I bring her. Thoughts??

[Pitou]

You do not want to go back to the full sized 28TE rudder. When Albin put out the first Flush Decks they had issues with the 28 FD's taking hard bow dives when making a turn at anything greater than hull speed. The shift of the engine forward from the engine box models gave them an unsuspected problem. I believe The designer of the 28TE, Terry Compton, had left Albin at this point. The consumer public created the desire for this new flush deck design so they modified the existing design shifting the engine forward and up. The boats center of gravity changed.

Their 1st thoughts through the trial and error process of correction was to add weight, shift weight and scratch their heads. When I was taking delivery of my 28TE at Standish, reps. from Albin were there trying to figure out what to do. They had 30 gallon and 55 gallon drums on hand filling them with varying degrees of water (weight) and shifting them around the decks looking for a solution. Next they started fooling with the rudder by modifying its shape bit by bit until the hard nose dive ceased.

The engine box and flush deck handle very differently. My suggestion is back and fill .... and don't be proud .... lean on that thruster!

[RobS]

Try your forward turning in the direction of your reverse stern walk and see if you notice being able to make a tighter turn.

[DougSea]

Try your forward turning in the direction of your reverse stern walk and see if you notice being able to make a tighter turn.

I recall my engine box model turning much better to starboard than to port. And a burst of power (and hence water over the rudder) always helped.

[rcwhite]

Yes, it does seem like there is no rudder at all at times

Although the thruster is handy, I prefer to maneuver without it for
the most part in anticipation of the day when the thruster doesn't
work when I expect it to be there.

I have the best results keeping the forward speed to a
minimum if not at a stop. We moor in a tight harbor and I
all but drift through the harbor shifting into gear only to turn
around the other boats and position myself to pick up the mooring.

Once moving forward with any momentum, slow speed steering is
limited at best.

Chris

[DougSea]

You may want to position yourself somewhere with nothing to hit and do some experimenting. Throw a few lifejackets on the water and maneuver around them. Water flow past the rudder is a big factor in your ability to turn. So drifting/coasting (no power) would limit your steering ability in any high speed boat (relatively small rudder, look at a big sportfish sometime, some of their rudders look tiny!). Having the boat in gear dramatically increases flow, and control.

[RobS]

Having the boat in gear dramatically increases flow, and control.

Like a big jetski with reverse too!

[rcwhite]

Exactly, use the prop for flow by the rudder when turning and not forward momentum.
This is counter intuitive and took some time to adjust to. Normally you would want
some speed for flow by the rudder but I can turn quite effectively at a standstill or close
to it but once moving forward at idle speed, the room required for turning increases
dramatically.

[sweetwater]

Thanks folks... Looks like I need less forward momentum. I will work on killing forward speed while in tight areas. It's tough with wind blowing like it always does on the bay. If that doesn't work I'm bolting a sheet of plywood to my rudder.

[DougSea]

... Looks like I need less forward momentum. I will work on killing forward speed while in tight areas...

AND keeping her in gear sometimes when you're tempted to put her in neutral!

In my marina I had to take a tight right to get into my slipway. The way to do that was to stay in gear, cut tight to the inside of the turn, and occasionally give her an extra boost of power to make the turn. If I tried to coast I'd swing wide.

[fairtide]

I suppose that having had an outboard or an I/O before operating the 28 flush deck would have made steering an easier task. With no rudders to speak of, only prop discharge and remembering that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, it would seem intuitive to use engine bursts with rudder offsets to slew the stern around.
I had the A27 sport cruiser (78 hp Nissan engine) with the large rudder. That boat behaved more as a sailboat in those tight turns into the slip. The 28 TE flush deck took some getting used to and I would agree that having minimal headway prior to turning into a slip is a good idea. Of course, with wind or current, one does need to have some experience with this.
I try to use the thruster only as needed, and this happens only on docking rather than leaving the slip.
The standard bow thruster is not a luxury on our boat; it is more of a necessity and safety feature.

[jcollins]

In my marina I had to take a tight right to get into my slipway. The way to do that was to stay in gear, cut tight to the inside of the turn, and occasionally give her an extra boost of power to make the turn. If I tried to coast I'd swing wide.

Mine is like yours. I have to cut sharp right, then tuck in just behind the T-pier to avoid a sand bar. I start my turn to port one slip ahead of mine. Forward to turn, reverse with power to stop headway, then neutral. Lean on the bow thruster to line it up,

[JackK]

Yeah, tight fairways force fast learning of close quarter maneuvering. It gets even more colorful when you meet another boat in the fairway.

Brewer Sakonnet.jpg

[jumpjet231]

Interesting thread. I have experienced some unstable behavior from my '04 FD. Last summer running on plane just after a turn to port, she took a dive over to stbd. I had to immediately chop the power to regain control. This startled me since my kids like to sit on the foredeck sometimes. My rudder will also stall in tight turns to stbd on plane. Since this is now a known behavior I can anticipate it unlike the dive she took last year. Reducing the deflection (angle of attack for fellow aviators) is the only cure for this rudder stall. The retreating prop must create enough disturbance on the stbd side of the undersized rudder that she stalls. The only way I can get this boat in and out of tight spaces is to plan on backing/turning to stbd with healthy doses of power (watch the Tilghman Island boat docking contest on youtube for motivation).

[sweetwater]

Jumpjet, do you have the cut down rudder or the original larger one? My 05 fd with the smaller rudder has never done that