What Now skipper - A question of seamanship

[Yachting_Monthly]

What Now Skipper?
Bill Anderson’s test of navigation and sailing skills –‘A question of seamanship’ – is one of the best-read features in Yachting Monthly and has been running for at least 30 years.

A compilation of Bill’s questions and answers has just been published by Adlard Coles Nautical under the title, ‘What Now Skipper?’
Bill often gets letters from YM readers who have their own ideas and answers to the varied sailing scenarios that Bill poses. And as Bill always points out, his answers are never the definitive solution – just one man’s idea.

So, as an experiment, we’re going to post Bill Question from the forthcoming December issue of Yachting Monthly, and invite you to post your own answers head of Bill’s answer.
If the idea proves popular, we will make it a regular feature on the website. We’d like to hear you thoughts and how you would deal with Bill’s imaginary scenarios. So here goes:

Kedging courtesy
Joe had expected the Salcombe Estuary to be crowded on a fine Saturday evening but not so crowded that he would have trouble finding an anchor berth in the normally peaceful area at the entrance to Frogmore Creek. As he motored up past the town he was met by the harbourmaster’s launch and told boatman where he intended to go.

‘That’s fine,’ said the lad in the launch. ‘But could you please tuck well in, clear of the fairway. We’ve got a big fleet of dinghies racing tomorrow, there will be 50 of them out there in the morning and another 50 in the afternoon.’
As he approached the anchorage he found that it was already nearly full. There appeared to be just one empty space between a large motorsailer and the rest of the anchored boats . He tucked in neatly – his is the red boat in the diagram.



With the anchor well dug in and the sails stowed, Joe and Pam settled down to a pre-dinner drink in the cockpit.
‘That motorsailer is going to be pretty close to the boats on the moorings when the tide turns,’ remarked Pam.
‘I’m glad it’s his problem and not mine,’ replied Joe.

Half an hour later, the motorsailer’s crew returned in their dinghy. Once on board, the skipper surveyed his surroundings and clearly came to the same conclusion about his proximity to the moorings. He set about loading the kedge and warp into the dinghy, obviously intending to lay it out astern to restrict his swing at the turn of the tide.

‘He can’t do that. He may keep himself clear of the moorings but he’ll be much too close to us when we swing to the ebb,’ said Pam, furious about their neighbour’s selfish behaviour. ‘I thought that you had to keep clear of other boats already at anchor when you put your hook down and presumably that applies just as much to laying out a kedge as it does to dropping your main anchor. Can’t we tell him to behave himself? He must know the rules, he’s wearing a blue ensign and flying the burgee of a very well-known yacht club.’

Joe did not reply immediately. He didn’t particularly want to have to shift berth to the other side of the Saltstone where he would inevitably have to be further out into the fairway and vulnerable to the horde of racing dinghies which would appear in the morning, but neither did he want to have an acrimonious altercation with his neighbour.

Put yourself in his place. What would you do?