I have had couple of rather embarrassing departures from the dock recently due to the fact that my boat backs very very poorly. The boat is an Orion 27, a full keel boat with a cut away forefoot with a fixed three blade prop in a small aperture. When backing, the boat just walks to starboard and tends to spin in place rather then actually move backwards. I have little backward thrust against moderate breezes such as 8 kts.

If I can get it started back, then I have both rudder and thrust control, but getting it to move backwards in the first place is the problem.

Usually when I leave the dock, I push it back in the direction I want to go, then engage the engine and with short bursts of power, I can continue back. I cannot back from a stop.

Twice I have had the bow of the boat blown off in the wrong direction as I left the dock and the boat spun around before I could get water flowing over the rudder to get control... this lead to a rather embarrassing "boat dance" while trying to spin the boat around in the narrow fairway while avoiding other boat "appendages."