NavList:
A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Prop-walk.
From: Jared Sherman
Date: 2003 Apr 22, 16:56 -0400
From: Jared Sherman
Date: 2003 Apr 22, 16:56 -0400
Dave- If you take a toy fan (because a real one would be way too dramatic) and place it on a carpeted floor, then turn it on, what happens? The blades spin, but the fan itself "walks" the other way on the blades. Effectively a screw is just a like wheel (which also happens to produce axial thrust) and as the shaft turns, the wheel rolls sideways. That's all it takes to "walk" your stern sideways. The fact that water is being thrown sideways as it slips off the blades just enhances this prop walk. The boat pivots sideways simply because there is no opposing force to prevent that end of it from walking. The keel, rudder, and hull are providing only lateral resistance when the boat is not in motion, so they just slow the walk down.