Why motor-sailing is good seamanship

Pete Goss looks at the times it can pay to switch on the engine, making life easier and allowing for better sailing

- Pete Goss

I have raced many types of boats without an engine to save weight, drag and cost. Indeed, I happily sailed around the world without an engine during the Vendée Globe, but experience and cruising have made me realise how narrow and one-dimensional this viewpoint was.

Fortunately, even for the racers out there competing in the Vendée Globe, engines are now mandatory, so that everyone shares the benefits without compromising competition.

In my younger days a similarly narrow focus had me marvelling as French cruisers sculled in and out of marinas. I was subsequently disappointed to learn that they weren’t purists at all; they were driven, instead, by tax. An unintended consequence was that it elevated French seamanship to another level.

Objectively there are far broader benefits to having an engine than the interests of speed, cost and drag to sailing. I would always have one but why do we often feel a sense of guilty failure when we turn it on, or admit to using it in the bar? Perhaps it is a throwback to when smoke-billowing steamships swept the purity, romance and majesty of clippers from our oceans. Lingering shame would have been given short shrift during Raphael Dinelli’s rescue in the Southern Ocean if I had been able to magic an engine on board. Fortunately, my boat-handling skills, polished by having to sail in and out of marinas with fee-paying guests, saved the day.

MANOEUVRING UNDER SAIL