I suppose I have a foot in both camps. Grew up on an Estuary and belonged to a yacht club from 7 years old. I sailed dinghies and crewed on larger yachts and worked as a deck hand on a tug and barge during school holidays. Joined the navy and worked my way up . CO of patrol boat, Navigating Officer, Hydrographic and Oceanographic Work and plenty of small boat work thrown in.
Left the navy and joined a tanker as third mate where my engineering knowledge stood me in good stead and was promoted to second mate second trip. I went back to school and passed for mate and then master unlimited. I waited for school to start I worked as a longshoreman and a tally clerk each time observing everything that was taking place.
I then joined a company that had just about every type of ship you could think of.
Everyone joining joined as 3rd mate regardless of ticket. I sailed as mate of ships that Mr Bugge would be familiar with; break bulk, reefer, container shipping, AHTS, and a bulk carrier as mate waiting for some slippers to become available and finally master.
When things folded I went ashore and owned a ship chandler business. Built that up and was made an offer I couldn’t refuse and went back to mate then master of a feeder container ship. I used a tug once or twice berthing in a gale but with a Becker rudder, CP and a bow thruster she was very manoeuvrable. I was an exempt master keeping the 8 to 12 doing my own pilotage including a dangerous bar harbour . Left there and went back deep sea as master for a German company trading world wide then when things picked up went back to the oil patch finishing up on vessels with all the toys.
In short I have fiddled with most things available on a bridge, driven things that didn’t want to be driven and thankfully avoided things that I would have to write long letters about.
That’s the right background for a real Mariner.
I do question the amount of experience people have on here who dismiss the use of rudder/s.
Mr Hogsnort, alluded to bekker or as I would term them enhanced rudder/s in a manoeuvring situation and was warmly applauded as a master of his trade which I wholly agree with.
Please please guys don’t underestimate the effectiveness of even the dumbest rudder.
The wrong positioning of them during manoeuvring can cause dire consequences.
The non use of it/them is ignoring a very effective piece of kit.
twin engines and 2 rudders is not the same as a single engine and rudder where it is important
Someone who disregards the rudder(s) does so at his own peril. Now, I did sail on an unfortunate vessel one time which had twin screws and a single rudder between the screws. During slow-speed maneuvering that rudder was really close to useless. It was a government design, of course.
I was thinking the same thing… even on a boat I was on that didn’t actually have the option to run them separately at the push of a button, it was possible with a little creative pump management to get them both kicked inboard full (45° on that boat) to get the stern (and indirectly, the bow) to absolutely do anything you wanted.
(Edit: CP Wheels)
Same here. I’m not a ship guy and have very minimal experience with a single screw, but starting out way back when on small boats, in particular little twin screw crew boats (less than 60 ft), they were so over powered that I was trained to center the rudder and twin screw to walk whichever way i wanted to go.
Once I ‘graduated’ to larger crewboats, under powered utility boats, mini osvs-without a bow thruster, that logic wasn’t practical…as much. Just centering the rudders and splitting the engines to crab/walk wasn’t going to accomplish anything efficiently. That’s when I really started understanding the use of the rudders.
From a legal risk perspective, it’d be best if there was written documentation clearly defining what roles and responsibilities the mate and captain have and what qualifications / training was required.
Can’t reduce legal risk to zero but If an incident occurred on the mate’s watch during an operations that they were qualified for and was allowed by previously approved procedure and so forth that should reduce the legal risk to acceptable levels.
It really depends on the boat in question. For one example, a cat that is half as wide as it is long will spin in place with differential engine power but a rudder turn at low speed in a docking situation will take up half the harbor.
It’s not so much rudder vs twist as an either/or, as much as it is not taking advantage of the using the rudder to assist the engine working ahead. You’re missing a major tool. Certainly when it comes to walking the boat transversely you’re going to need to use rudder.
Leaving the rudder midships for someone who is just learning the basics of twin-screw handling is okay at the beginning but I’d certainly question any professional advocating for that in normal operations. Before now, I’d only seen it in the recreational community.
I go back far enough to were OSVs had no bow thrusters.
My first involvement with the offshore oil & gas industry was in 1970 as “navigator” for an American company operating 5 OSVs in S.E.Asia.
The highest art of “boat handling” was to make the boat “walk” sideways, using throttles and rudders only. The trick was to position the rudders hard over according to whether inboard or outbord turning props, than put one engine ahead, the other astern, slowly increasing the RPMs until the boat started to move sideways without any ahead or astern movement (a balancing act)
I remember one of the skippers trying to get between the anchor wires on a tender barge in Indonesia. He worked the “sticks” roughly and without watching the tachometers. The boat refused to do what he wanted, (turning instead of walking) This resulting in a stream of words not suited for a polite forum like this, blaiming the boat, not himself.
After some attempts I asked if I could give it a try, which resulted in more swearing, telling me that no f**ing foreigner could possibly know how to “walk a boat”.
But he eventally relented (to prove his point, probably).
I had noticed that the two engines picked up RPMs differently, so I brough the engines up slowly, while watched the techometers and the boat started to “walk” like it should. (More swearing from the skipper)
Thanks NWW ,
Saved me some typing 
There is a way around the 2x prop and single rudder configuration but it is pretty counter intuitive.
You twin screw but in the opposite way that you would conventionally. This puts the single rudder in the wash of the ahead engine thereby creating lift from the rudder to turn the vessel while the astern engine stops headway. Learnt this on a notorious class of Container Ship that had been causing havoc for the entire 30 years of their lives. (Outward turning props)
The only other ship I saw this on was a smaller passenger ship 180m or so.
That would be the Resolution Bay class container ships. More than a few grey hairs around the place.
The Big Whites
Safmarine were on our run
Has anyone ever seen the concept of VMC as applied to boats in action? A twin engine boat is coming into the dock engine out. The port engine is out and they are coming in port side to. They give the boat some right rudder to not hit the dock and it isn’t helping. Old single-screw thinking takes over and they give the engine a blast in forward to swing the bow out and it does the opposite and they nail the dock reeeeel good!
Lucky you. I forgot they made the same mistake more than once.
Blooming lovely ships though.
Apart from the slow speed manoeuvring.
They looked good and apparently they had beautiful accommodation. I only saw the pilots cabin on over carriage, but the rest of it looked really nice
Here’s a way to move a twin-screw, single rudder, house-aft boat transversely without a thruster, and on boats that would not otherwise walk sideways with engines.
The job was to moor alongside 300’ Knot-ships at anchor at St. Paul island and St. Matthew island. These are open roadsteads, not harbors. In strong winds the Knot-ships would rapidly swing back-and-forth through an arc of about 60 degrees while at anchor, like a pendulum. Or, a wrecking ball. They were always a moving target.
If you made a normal approach the Knot-ship would either rapidly swing towards you or away from you, fast enough a Yokohoma wouldn’t protect you from a dented hull if the ship was swing towards you. If swinging away, there was no time to get heaving lines across before it was too far away.
So, you did this: You came in slow upwind, watching the other vessel swing back and forth, judging where to hove-to close to the Knot ship but just outside of her maximum swing. Your boat would come to a stop bow to the wind, 50 to 100 feet away from the Knot-ship.
If you got lucky you would end up parallel and fairly close. Maybe even heaving-line close. But usually the Knot-ship would swing close, pause, then rapidly swing away from you. Which was ok, because you now did this:
If the Knot-ship was to port, you would goose the engines to twist your boat a little to port, but make no headway, presenting the starboard bow to the wind. The wind would tend to turn the boat to port and push her astern. So, you goosed only the port engine ahead slow. The resultant force between engine and strong wind on the starboard bow would cause your boat to sail sideways to port, a point off the wind. No headway, no falling back. Just sailing transversely across the wind to port, wind slightly on the starboard bow, and port engine repeatedly goosed dead slow ahead.
Meanwhile, the Knot-ship off to port would have completed its swing away from you and now be rushing back to you, across a distance of several hundred feet. To intercept her you might move ahead with the engines a bit, or allow yourself to be blown back
If you thought the Knot-ship was closing fast enough to damage the Yokohoma fenders, then you would twist the boat to put the wind a point on the port bow and goose the starboard main. Now you’re sailing transversely away from the Knot-ship which is drawing close. But slow enough to allow it to come alongside.
In the last instant you twisted the engines to put you parallel to the other boat as it touched the Yokohamas.
You could still keep the sailing across the wind a little while alongside the Knot-ship, but it really came down to a good deck crew to get you moored before the Knot-ship sailed off again.