The Steamboating Forum

Found it in 30 feet of water with the prop nut about ten feet away. There's a story there some where. Oh, those stink potters!

Clean and in reasonably good shape now that I have the barnacles knocked off. I don't need it. Looking for a trade perhaps.

Too bad -most of our boats require Right hand

Yeah, I guess I was hoping that someone would decide that they MUST have this WONDERFUL thing and take it off of my hands.

Actually, some engines don't care. The more important complications might be the direction of rotation for some rotary pumps and, for me, getting used to how the monster backs up. Every boat I own backs to port. It would be like trying to drive a car with reversed steering!

I have room on the shop wall. It will go up there with the weird old lubricators, useless but beautiful guages and the giant steam siren horn off of a battleship or something.

Mike

farmerden wrote:Too bad -most of our boats require Right hand

Yeah, but if the engine will accept "left turning" that's a better way to go. Laying your boat alongside a dock, starboard side to (which is frequently the case) in restricted space, is easy: Aim the bow to the dock and when it touches, reverse the engine. The stern will be sucked right to the dock while the bow stays in place. Also really great for going into "slots" that are at right angles to the dock. Done it, love it!

Agreed. In fact my sailboat is RH prop with STBD engine controls so things are in the wrong place.

Now you've got me thinking about my launch. I'm in the process of changing everything and the steering gear was going to be on the starboard side of the engine control area. I may think about controlling from the Port side and coming to the dock on the port side when available.

I believe it is called the 'port' side for historical reasons. Read: 'Steering Board' for steering oar and port for the other side of the boat. The steering oar would be on the right side of the boat as most people, even hairy old vikings and Friesians, were likely right handed. One would tend to put the opposite side of the boat from the steering oar against a dock. Sounds good anyway.

Mike

The two names used to be Starboard (steeringboard) and Larboard (don't know where that word comes from, Leaboard perhaps. )
As Mike says as steering was by means of an oar lashed to one side at the stern it was customary to come into a wharf or dockside on the Larboard .
Not surprisingly in a stormy sea with a howling wind it was difficult to hear the difference between Starboard and Larboard in any shouted orders so it became customary to refer to the Larboard as Port since that was the side against which you moored in port.
The two names were retained when steering oars were gradually abandoned in favour of central rudders from about the 13th Century onwards .

Regards Edward .

Aha! Very lucid. But you have lain yourself open for some teasing.

At this point, when I have delivered myself of some similar authoritative pronouncement, complete with a reference to the 13th century, my wife pipes up with, "And that would be about when you graduated from school?"

I just can't win.

Mike

All of this from a comment about finding a LH propeller

When we sit around the woodstove in the shop ,isn't this just how conversations go? Now we can do the same thing internationly.Ming you it's not as warm and there's no coffee pot on the stove! But it still works!!LOL Den