How to install bow thruste ron smaller boat

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Ed Schenck. You are kidding, a bow thruster on a 31?! You would slow your boat's forward motion at great cost to go sideways?! Besides, the thruster goes nowhere near where the damage repair will be done. This is a joke or there is more to the story. I have to agree with Ed There comes a size of vessel where maneuverability is so limited that thrusters are needed. Smaller vessels do not suffer from this problem.

Most can turn in a two boat length circle. Piloting skills are required of course. Taking a sailboat out without the needed piloting skills is equivalent to handing your car keys to a person without driving skills. The PJC panel allows a user to control the thruster and to program in a percentage of power if they do not wish to use full power.

This is helpful when the bow needs to be nudged slowly into a tight spot. The latest in thruster technology is rim-drive thrusters, such as the Pittman Award-winning Rimdrive introduced last year by Vetus.

However, few pleasure craft need a thruster that can push the bow against a direct side wind of more than 25 knots. Lewmar Thrusters can help provide additional control just when you need it at the touch of a button, or move of a joystick. Clean the crimped-on cable ends and the terminals on the motor with a wire brush or emery paper, and reconnect the cables, again using two wrenches.

If the insulating boots on the cable ends are torn or worn, replace them. In general, hydraulic thrusters are quieter, but you need high-pressure hydraulics for them to work properly, so they are usually installed only on larger craft. For smaller boats, the choice is either 12 or 24 volts electric. Go with higher voltage if possible, but make sure you have enough battery power. In most cases the thruster will run off the main batteries, but you need to check to ensure they have enough capacity to drive the unit.

If your house bank is too small, you either have to install a battery near the thruster to keep voltage losses down with short cable runs or run the main engine when running the thruster. This twin-prop thruster required two symmetrical 9in holes cut into either side of the bow. You should also have an idea of the prevailing wind strength in your area. If it consistently blows plus knots where you keep your boat, you will need a larger thruster. Scot West, owner of Strider, a Bristol Strider is a big, solid boat that is hard to maneuver in close quarters.

West needed a thruster powerful enough to move the boat in a fairly strong wind. He also wanted a variable speed thruster to ensure the boat would move smoothly, and the smallest size tunnel that was feasible.

Finally, it needed to be easily operated from the helm or by remote. Because he often sails singlehanded, West opted for a radio remote control that allows him to move around the boat and still control the thruster or the windlass.

The first step in the installation involved removing the water tank from under the forward bunks. This, in turn, meant taking the bunks apart and pulling the tank into the main cabin, where it had to be cut into pieces to get it out of the companionway. With the tank out, the next job was cleaning the space, painting it and replacing the bunk supports. While this was being done, the boat was carefully leveled to ensure the thruster hole would be aligned horizontally.

The edges of the two holes were then ground back three to four inches for good fiberglass adhesion and the tunnel was pushed through, plugging the holes. Using alternating layers of fiberglass cloth and chopped strand mat, Nate Hardy of Bayline Boatyard and Transport then glassed the tunnel in place. While the outside glasswork was curing, Hardy also glassed the tunnel into place from the inside to form a watertight seal.

When the job was polished and painted it was hard to see where the work was done. It was that good. As soon as the glasswork was fully cured, the motor was installed. The first step was to cut a hole in the tunnel using the supplied template and mount the gearleg—the part that houses the impellers and motor. The motor can be mounted horizontally or vertically.

In this case the best fit was vertical.