And I''ve got some ocean-front property in Arizona. Well, thank goodness I''m not crazy. In my original writing I was going to end with "this just doesn''t make sense to me," but I deleted it because I assume that because I see people doing it, it must be a valid concept. Saw 6 boats in a pack around Bloody Point Light last summer motorsailing DOWNwind in light air, mains luffing, and just could not figure out what they were accomplishing. Wouldn''t you go ahead and swing that boom out there to take advantage of the slight breeze aft?! Duh. Who wants the engine on anyway. But I''ll still experiment and see what happens in different conditions.
"Steadying the motion" does interest me, however, and leads to another question: what is the most comfortable way and best strategy to deal with a 2-foot (or more) Bay chop? Here''s a situation where motorsailing won''t work for me even if I wanted to. My prop comes out of the water when the stern is hanging over the "chop trough" on starboard tack. (I guess if I only run the engine on port tack and make those tacks the longest, I''ll make really good time!)