I have a list of 30 exercises I want to do to get to know my newly acquired Ariel. On that list is sculling her. My outboard moved that exercise to the top of the list. That stupid air pump that runs on dead dinosaurs quit.
There was not a breath of wind near the harbor when the bucket of demented parts quit with me 600 feet from the slip. So I sculled the rudder home. I enjoyed moving along slowly, propelling myself with the tiller. It works, but it's slow. It took me over an hour to get to slip. I'm not complaining. I'd never imagined a boat her size could be sculled at all. I've used the technique on smaller sailboats that had no engine, when my estimate of speed had me come up short when trying to shoot into a slip, but never something as large as an Ariel.
I believe this technique is possible on a boat having a wheel instead of a tiller – but considering most boats with wheels require more than a full revolution of the wheel to move the rudder through a full side-to-side deflection, the technique would rapidly exhaust anyone using it. Chalk up another advantage of tillers over wheels.
So once I was in the harbor channel, all these boats passed me. While passing, one skipper asked: "Are you aground?" I said, no, I'm just sculling back to my slip. He looked at me as if I had grown two heads. A sailboat came along (under power) and asked if I needed a tow. I said: "No. Do you?" I then laughed and thanked him, and explained that I was moving along fine by sculling. He said: "Doing what?!" I repeated my explanation. He said: "Don't you know that's impossible without a special mount for a long oar?" And I said: "Gee, I wish you'd told me that before I'd sculled my boat this far."
I got her all the way into the harbor and into my slip. The same gentleman was standing on the neighboring dock watching me round the corner, turn 90 degrees right, line up abeam with the slip, turn 90 degrees again, and propel my boat ever-so-slowly into its berth. He was all bug-eyed at my violation of the laws of physics. Good thing there weren't any physics cops there to catch me.
