Docking Single-Handed

     or, Always have a "Plan B!"
 

Believe it can be done!
(fortune cookie)

Earlier I talked about how to handle your boat by yourself if you need to.

Once you’ve sailed your boat back to your marina by yourself, you’re going to have to dock it. In an earlier entry, I proposed a scenario where your sailing companion has sprained his ankle and can’t help. If you have your slip set up for such an eventuality, that won’t be a problem.

First, you have to be very familiar with handling your boat under low speed. That can be tricky because the wind (and current, if any) will have more effect on where your boat goes. So, it’s a good thing to practice.

To bring your boat into the slip, you have to maintain enough speed to have steering, but you don’t want to come into the dock any faster than you're willing to hit it. So once you’ve turned into the slip, you no longer need speed for steering, and commonly, skippers put their boat into neutral and then into reverse (don’t just go from forward to reverse, skipping neutral.) Reverse is the closest thing you have to a brake when docking.

With two people, one person can be out of the cockpit with a boat hook to grab a line, but your companion is sitting with ice on his ankle. So here’s what you do.

Before you set sail, tie a long line on the piling at the far end of your slip. Stretch it out and decide what spot you want to use on your boat to temporarily hold it. At that spot on the line, make a figure-8 loop with a carabiner in it. Clip it on to the boat, and then

My docking line latched on to my toe rail 

secure it with  cleat hitch near the bow of the boat. Your goal is to have that carabiner or loop get tight and stop the boat before you hit what's in front of it.

Correctly tied cleat hitch

If you don’t have a toe rail, you can use a stanchion base, as this is a line used only temporarily for docking. Or, if you have a mid-cleat, instead of putting a carabiner in the figure-8 loop, make the loop big enough to slip over that cleat without a struggle.

So you come into the slip slowly, have the boat hook handy, grab that line, and attach it to your boat. Your boat is now quite safely secure, and you can take your time putting your permanent docking lines on. When you’re done, dis-attach your temporary docking line. It should be too tight to stay on the boat through tidal changes.

You will probably have to grab that double-ended docking line in your hands sometimes and pull the boat a little forward or a little back to get that loop or carabiner in the right place, but that’s not too hard to do.

On the other side of my slip, I also have a line from a middle piling going to the front dock at about a 45º angle, above the waterline. If the wind is from the north, it tends to blow my bow over toward the next boat. This diagonal line prevents my bow from swinging into the boat next to me.

By the way, you can be sure the fellow with the ice on his foot will be back-seat driving again, and it can be very distracting at a very stressful time. Tell him ahead of time what you’re going to do, and … of course … PRACTICE it before you need it. You may have to tell people at the dock that you’re practicing doing it by yourself, and you will still have a hard time keeping them from helping by grabbing the bow or something similar. Thank them for their help but explain that you’re practicing doing it single-handed.

And that brings up a final point: help is good. If any of those helpers live in the marina, it might be smart to have their phone numbers. If you come in single-handed while the marina is open, marina staff may be very willing to help you. I know they would here at Twin Dolphin. However, after hours if you call a marina resident, odds are he or she would be glad to come out and “catch your bow.”

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