Docking Techniques Seminar

good morning everyone this is Tom Percy the Maryland school is sailing in seamanship and the subject this morning is docking techniques for single-engine boats with right hand turning propellers as you can see on the title screen there and that's what we were talking about for the next hour and a half or so this is based on the work that we've done at the Maryland school over the past six or seven years with a lot of docking techniques and programs that we've used in our in our normal training courses and aasa has adopted this program and made it one of their standards so what I'd like to talk about with this is basically the techniques for getting boats in and out of slips and a lot of the theory and the forces that act on the boat and we will talk about that in some detail so I'm going to take my screen off my my picture off here I just wanted to let you see who it is it's talking and I'm going to go into full-screen mode here so you can see see that now the basic question is how do I get that big boat into that little slip and when you look at this picture it might give you some idea of what we're talking about with a big boat however what we talked about today is going to cover boats from 15 or 20 feet on up to 60 feet because the principles are basically the same and what you need to do in docking about safely expeditiously and without a lot of hassle is to is to understand the forces that act on a boat how you can control them have your other crewmembers oriented or trained in the procedures that you're going to use and to have a docking plan and we're going to talk about all those things today now we're going to cover a lot of material and I'd like to just I'll talk about these more later or at least the first one docking techniques is the book that Billy just referred to and this is a training manual that we use in the school and I'll show you a image of the cover of that at the end of the presentation and also tell you how you can acquire a copy of that from the school the point of mentioning it here is that most of the diagrams and procedures that we talked about in today's seminar are coddled covered in detail in that book so we're going to cover a lot of material today and if you get kind of overwhelmed and confused recognize that if you want to go back and refresh your mind on what we talked about that we covered in detail in that in that training book the second reference shown here is chapman piloting seamanship small boat handling and this is a kind of a classic marine and boating book and you can get it from most marine stores and Chandler's and then third image shown here or the third link shown here is the animated knots comm and I highly recommend this for learning knot tying and there are certain basic knots that you do need in docking boats and we'll talk about some of these but basically go to animated knots and you'll see a motion pictures basically of the knots being tied they're really very very well done so with that in mind I'd like to first talk about the theory and that is the the forces that act on a boat so here's the agenda for today the theory first then the mooring Arrangements that we'll use in various mooring situations like in a slip and parallel docking and so forth and thirdly the undocking that is getting away from the dock and the next one is parallel docking parallel docking along appear then docking bow into a slip then backing into a slip and then we'll do a brief summary of what we covered like to next go into the theory and some of the forces that act on the boat so the first one to look at is the pivot point and the pivot point is the point around which a boat turns when we drive a car we we turn the front wheels and we steer the front of the car but in a boat we basically steer the back of the boat and the boat when it turns will turn around the pivot point the pivot point itself is located roughly at the center of the boat it's actually at the center of gravity of the boat when you when the boat is moving forward the pivot point moves forward a little bit on the boat is moving aft it moves asked a little bit but for the most part it's roughly at the center of the boat and you simply have to recognize the concept that the boat will rotate about some point at its midpoint and when you steer the boat you'll be turning the stern and that in turn will turn the bow so that's a pivot point the next item is the direction of the propeller turns and in the very beginning I mentioned right hand turn and propeller turning propellers and if you look at these two diagrams you'll see in this first diagram in a head gear a right hand turning propeller this is looking from the stern of the boat and here's the keel and here's the propeller and in a head gear the propeller is turning to the right or clockwise in reverse gear is turning to the left and that's a right hand turning propeller okay now this has significance when we get to another some other items and the techniques that we use but let's go on to the next concept which is prop wash and prop wash is like the air coming off of a fan if you stand in front of a fan - blows air in your face and that's akin to the prop wash so the prop wash is the water flow coming off the propeller and in in forward gear it is float the prop wash is flowing aft and in reaction to that the boat moves forward in reverse gear the propwash is flowing forward and the boat moves to the stern and notice here in the in the forward gear the propwash flows over the rudder and in reverse gear the propwash does not flow over the rudder so that makes a difference in some of the controls that we use now this is the configuration we have in most boats and I'm not talking here and out without boards or special marine drives but I'm talking about a rather conventional arrangement with propeller and rudder in this in this arrangement which is what you normally have on most votes the next concept is rudder control of the prop wash now you recall that the prop wash and filler gear is flowing aft so that when we turn the rudder if you look at the if you look at the solid figure here that's a boat facing in this direction and the rudder is turned to the right and the prop wash coming off the prop is deflected to the right the result of that is that the stern of the boat will move to the left and rotate about its pivot point as a result of the reaction to this prop wash being deflected if we turn the rudder in the other direction the prop wash will float to the left and the stern of the boat will turn to the right okay so that's how you control the prop wash in forward gear in reverse gear there is essentially no control of the prop wash then there's a concept of prop walk and in this with the right hand turning propeller if we are in reverse gear as shown here this is kind of like a roto tiller a garden roto tiller digging through the dirt and as you dig through the dirt with a roto tiller the blades on the bottom dig into the dirt pull you along with that rototillers they dig in the propeller and a boat is essentially the same as that that the blades on the bottom when they're at the bottom there of their ark they are more efficient in working against the water so therefore they pull the stern of the boat to the left or to port the the blade that's on the top is less efficient and it does not have the effect of countering that pull to the left so prop walk with a right with a right hand turning propeller in forward gear when it's in Reverse we'll pull the stern to the left okay so prop walk is to the left is the thing to remember in reverse gear alright the next item shown is turning arc so this shows two diagrams of two different boats and the one on the right has their as right rudder and if you are going forward the boat is going to follow an arc to the right and if you go astern the boat is still going to follow an arc to the right so basically the boat will follow an arc to the right either in forward or reverse when you have right rudder in left rudder a similar thing it will follow an arc to the left that's discounting any conditions of wind effect or or acting on the boat then this shows a comparison between tiller versus wheel steering in both cases we're steering the rudder to the right but in order to accomplish that with a steering wheel we had to turn the wheel to the right in order to turn the rudder to the right however with a tiller we have to push the tiller left in order to turn the rudder to the right okay so if I say right rudder with a tiller you push the stern to the left but right rudder with a wheel you turn the wheel to the right just like you do in a car you would be steering the boat in that manner okay now this shows the effects of wind on a boat a crosswind generally will blow most boats bow down with the wind and that's because the the drag on the underbody of the boat is greater below the water and the drag on the rigging and the furled sails is greater forward in the boat so the result of those two effects are to turn the bow down downwind with a crosswind and the next shows the effects of current and essentially that's going to move the entire boat it's going to just transfer it down down current oops excuse me sorry okay the next item I want to mention is momentum and that is it's related to the weight of the boat the heavier the boat the greater the momentum of the boat the momentum basically resists changes in speed so if a heavy boat will Coast longer when it's moving or it will take more power to speed it up and a lighter boat will do the opposite it will cause a shorter distance and it will take less power to speed it up you you may be going faster than you think and a lot of times in docking situations we say at certain points come to a complete stop and you look around you and you think you're stopped but if you look down at the bubbles in the water next to the boat you'll see that the boat may still be moving along much more rapidly than you think it is so check with the bubbles in the water rattle speeds and these are somewhat arbitrary but it's just to give you a concept of the kind of speeds engine speeds that we might be talking about with a diesel engine in a boat let's say a sailboat of about 30 30 feet in length you'll you'll generally have four slow speed you'll have the engine at about 800 rpm it has speed ahead about 1500 rpm and full throttle ahead about 3000 rpm the reverse the reverse numbers are similar now a term called throttle kicks and when we're doing our docking there are certain times when we have to kick the engine and kick it hard or kick it not as hard and a kick ahead refers to full throttle ahead for about three seconds and a lot of times people are hesitant about going up to full throttle but you have that momentum that inertia of the boat you're trying to change its direction or change your boat speed and there are certain times when you have to really pour the coals to it and kick it hard you kick it in the butt so full ahead for three seconds as a kick ahead a short kick ahead would be half speed ahead for one second just a short burst for a second and the astern kicks are similar kick astern and short kick astern so we use that terminology in our docking procedures and we're told when we're talking to each other when we're doing a docking maneuver kicking a head or a short give it a short kick ahead and these are things to remember in that regard now rudder position again this is somewhat arbitrary and this is based on a wheel on the rudder which is from stop to stop on the wheel about one and a half turns which is about the average for most both one and a half to two turns but basically right rudder you turn the wheel a little bit to the right half right rudder turn the about one-third turn to the right and full right rudder turn the wheel to the stop which is about three-quarters of a turn and left rudder would be similar now as I say if you can't remember all these things I'm going through they are covered in our docking manual the next item I want to talk about this is the first of our procedures that I want to want to present to you and a standing turn turns the boat in a confined area and this is an essential maneuver to understand and to be able to do because when you're in and around docks going down a fair way between slips of boats and a lot of times you have to turn the boat fully around within that narrow fairway it's a standing turn that you use to accomplish this and it can only be done to the right with a right hand turning propeller it will not work to the left with a right hand turning propeller if you have a boat which has a left-hand turning propeller it would then you would then do your standing turn in the left direction but again most boats have right hand turning propellers and we would do a standing turn to the right and not to the left in order to do this procedure the rudder is held to starboard to the right during the entire procedure you don't go back and forth with the rudder you just turn it to the right and leap and hold it there the engine is kicked ahead and kicked and reverse repeatedly until the boat is turned the boat turns within its length now some call this procedure back in fill we call it a standing turn but it's the same procedure the next diagram shows you what that procedure looks like there's a lot of stuff on this page but I'll go through it a piece of a time first of all if this is a sequential procedure 1 steps 1 through 6 and up top you see the gray arrow refers to the direction of properties diagrams and the black arrow is the directions the stern moves in response to the propwash so in diagram one we're in a headgear with right rudder full right rudder we're starting a standing turn and if I kick ahead full kick ahead three seconds up to 3000 rpm the propwash is being deflected to the right the stern will move actually to the left and forward from position 1 to position 2 now come to the next diagram and here's position 2 which is the same as this position 2 and we now go into reverse but we keep the rudder to the right because the rudder has no effect on this procedure and we now kick astern 3 full full full throttle in Reverse and it will now pull the stern to the left and it's prop walk which is pulling it to the left and of course the prop wash which is pulling it back so we've now pulled the boat around to position 3 but we're pretty close to our original position here going to the next diagram here's position 3 same as this one and we again kick ahead rudder remains in right rudder the stern will move forward in to the left to position 4 then here's position 4 we're again in kik-kik astern we pull the stern to Afton to the left we then kick ahead and we kick astern we've now turned the boat in a pretty much in its length and the rudder is always to the right and we're simply changing our throttle from kick ahead forward to kick ahead to kick in Reverse and one of the things to remember when we do this is to not Jam the throttle through the neutral gear because it can can damage your transmission you want to stop and and I'll mention this to consciously to conscious they stopped in the neutral position so that you don't damage transmission so that's a standing turn and we use this commonly in docking procedures either a full turn Navy 360 or a quarter turn or a half turn and shown here but you want to master a standing turn it's a vital procedure for docking a boat the next item I want to show you is doubling a line and this is when you're getting away from a dock and you want to bring your line with you but you want to maintain control on a dock cleat or dock piling and you'll double a line like this around that piling so that you can um as you back out in this case you can take the line with you so it will refer to this in some of our procedures in a few minutes I mentioned shifting gears don't Jam the gear the gears through neutral coordinate the gear shift and the throttle and speak the words to yourself forward neutral reverse to to make sure you make a conscious stop in neutral mooring lines what we recommend is three steering nylon I recommend against using braided nylon for mooring lines they they don't they don't hand as well in your hand and they also don't resist abrasion as well as a three strand nylon and we use always nylon for docking lines because the nylon line stretches actual it will stretch about forty percent of its length before it will break so three strand nylon is the is the line to use secondly I recommend plane ends with a bowline knot as needed and a voice that you avoid the use of braided braided loops and the reason for this is a couple of reasons one when you put your loop on a piling or a cleat there are times when someone else will come along with another boat and put their line over yours and then you're trying to get out and they have not done it properly and your line is locked in with a braided loop and it's easy to untie a bowline and to just slip your line out and the second reason is that there are a lot of procedures in which you want to pull a line through for example when you are doing the doubling of the line procedure that we mentioned here if you had a loop or not in this end of the line that would get in the way of pulling it off the piling so we avoid use of braided loops we use a bowline knot and then there are and we'll show these in the diagram there are bow lines Stern lines a forward spring line after spring line and an anchor line and I'll show you these in on some of our mooring configurations here's a young man beginning to put a line on a cleat and learning a cleat hitch is an important step as well essential knots for docking I mentioned a cleat hitch the but the bowline as distinguished from a bow line there's a round turn with half hitches there's a rolling hitch and I mentioned previously animated knots comm for step-by-step instructions in tying these knots and here's a cleat hitch frequently tied incorrectly but this shows the correct procedure for tying a cleat hitch and this is something that you want to practice you want to learn how to tie it from all directions that is you're approaching the cleat and the line from various directions and you want to be able to tie that pretty much with your eyes closed and get it right it's going to hold your boat and you want it to you want it to work well heaving a line this is an essential technique to learn because many times you're coming into a dock and there's a dock hand who's going to help you and you want to heave the line to them and there's a proper technique for doing this and it can make a real difference between a successful and a none and an unsuccessful docking the details of doing this procedure are described in the top docking techniques manual that I referred to that we use so keep in mind heaving line and learn the procedure for doing that docking safety I suggest you don't attempt to manhandle large boats over 28 feet because this is where injuries can come in by manhandling I'm referring to pushing on a piling with your hands putting your foot on the piling or on the dock these are where injuries come and we recommend it in in boats once they get up over 28 feet they're getting heavy enough that you you can sustain injuries now alternatives for docking in strong wind one is to use spring lines and we'll go over these a second alternative is to use a more accessible dock than you are planning to use and thirdly is you might temporarily anchor out and just don't dock until the strong winds pass and also for docking safety you want to remember to always plan in a scalp and escape route for all of your dockings and we'll talk about this as we go through some of the scenarios crew assignments ideally you want to have to deck crew and a lot of things I know people have asked us the question what about single handy and you'll use the same procedures in single-handed but you have to do all the jobs by one person so you have to understand the procedures understand the techniques the forces that act on the boat but one person may end up doing it so you have to be more agile for that purpose dock line prep there the bow line spring line stern lines prepare bowline loops for the shore end for pilings or cleats and know braided loops I mentioned have your fender fenders in place plus a roving fender follow the skipper's instruction and here's a vital precaution do not let advice from the shore counter the skipper's plan so many times we try to come in the dock we have a plan where all the crew members understand how we're going to dock this boat what the procedure will be the dock the deck crew goes up forward the the skipper's at the helm let's say and someone on on the dock start shouting instructions to the bow crew about do it this way do it that way and the bow crew gets confused and be huddled so my advice is ignore advice from ashore follow the skipper's instructions the bow crew also wants to call out distances to the helmsman because the helmsman is a long way from the bow and does not necessarily know how far the bow is from the dock and be alert for obstructions other boats and swimmers in the water here are some terms that I'll go through briefly and again these are covered in our docking techniques book but the bitter end is the inboard end of the line the end that you're holding the bow line is a mooring line attached to the bow of the boat a bowline is a knot it's a loop tied in the end of a rope with a bowline knot making way refers to a boat moving through the water under some form of propulsion whether it's motor or oars or sales but it's making way through the water port side is the left side of the boat a spring line is a mooring line leading forward or aft usually from a midship cleat on a boat starboard side is the right side of a boat surging a line refers to temporarily ease tension on a line and allow it to slide out from a stationary object like a cleat so if you're giving the instruction serves the line it means to ease it out but don't lose control of it turn a line means to wrap a line around a stationary object a single turn wraps once around the object the line is not tied or cleated to the object the line is simply turned on the stationary object and underway refers to a boat making way under propulsion or floating freely and not mortar anchored a boat adrift is underway but is not making way so you understand the difference between the distinction between underway and making way making ways under under propulsion under way it can be either under propulsion or drifting the next thing is mooring arrangements and I'll talk about show you some details on these now this shows a basic arrangement for mooring in a slip and you can see that this boat here on the left has to bow lines it has two Stern lines it has a after spring that is a spring line that's leading aft and it has a forward spring line a spring line that's leading forward and the key in my mind in we're going to slip like this is to have your lines tight enough so that the boat does not ride up against the pilings when there's a weather change if you are if you have a tidal swing of three feet or less you can generally tie your your your mooring lines tight and center the boat up and the stretch in the nylon line will generally be accommodated will generally accommodate up to a three foot tidal swing if you have more than three feet you either have to leave the slack in the lines which means that with if a weather changes expect us to come back and readjust those lines or you have you're on a floating dock but with a large tidal swing you have to take some special precautions but with this arrangement if I have three feet or less entitled swing I would like to keep my lines tight so that a weather change a strong wind coming through will not be jamming the boat up against the pilings this next diagram simply shows that you also have the option of crossing the stern lines and this next diagram shows a similar arrangement with bow in first on on a slip okay this is one of our training boats and this shows a the stern lines being crossed at the back here you can't see much else here's parallel mooring along the pier and basically you notice that I have there's fenders showing these are fenders these are not pilings and we have a bow line a stern line and we have again a forward spring in an after spring the boat is secured here's one of our training boats in a parallel mooring situation if you have an arrangement where the wind is blowing strongly onto the dock you may want to use an anchor and I realize you may not always have the the room this may be a fair way that it's not not good to put an anchor out but if you have the ability with a strong onshore wind an anchor is one way to protect the boat hold it off the dock your your line arrangement is similar but what you're doing with the anchor is basically taking the pressure off of the boat riding up against the dock okay here's a Mediterranean more use commonly in the mid where dock space is at a premium and basically in order to accomplish this you your boat is out here you drop your anchor out at this point you back in on the anchor and you tie your stern lines talk about the procedures for undocking a boat that is getting away from the dock first authors pre departure preparations and this checklist that I'm going to go through with you here this was also covered in detail in our training manual if you want the details of this but basically it should be be very thoroughly inspecting the boat and these are just some photos showing people checking various places on the boat prior to getting underway and it's something that you should thoroughly do on a regular basis so a seaworthiness inspection of the boat and and for that you generally are going to check the entire boat first of all for Coast Guard required safety equipment including your PFDs that is your personal floatation devices and flares boat documentation your Man Overboard equipment engine and transmission oil levels your steering gear fuel and water tank levels your through hull valves bilges bilge water electrical panel and equipment your instruments your nav lights your sails your banister boom standing and running rigging ground tackle dock line fenders and the list goes on and on and on but you want to know that your boat is ready to go to sea you also want to check on your weather forecasts both over the VHF maybe before you got down to the dock you checked on the internet when you get to your boat to check the VHF and and on the NOAA channels and if available on your boat your nav text receiver which has weather forecasts on it and I highly recommend nav techs on boats that are even sailing coastal waters navigation you want to set up your your plan your plan route for the day and have your routes and your charts and all of that arranged ahead of time you want to check out your electrical system and make sure you're properly secured your 110 volt systems you're disconnected from the dock with your electrical you have your DC electrical system properly lined up on the boat your sales you want to remove the mainsail covers have your sails ready to to deploy you want to make duty assignments to your crew for getting underway specific assignments or who's going to do what plan your departure we're going to go out of the dock here we're going to turn left we're going to go out around that buoy and so forth so that everyone on board knows what that procedure is going to be you go through your engine start up proper áfive proper cooling water flow verify that your gear shift and your throttle properly operate and then for departure you do a final check of your steering gear your wind direction and how that's going to affect your departure traffic in the area cast off your lines and your moat around slowly so you want to go through a regular pre-departure procedure before you depart now here's the simplest procedure for getting underway from a parallel docking arrangement where you have favorable winds you notice over here that here's a dock and here you are in the center boat and there are boats fore and aft of you and you want to get off of this dock and basically you disconnect your your mooring lines and you let the wind blow you out you you're going to be you have the engine running of course before you started this and you you use short kicks of the engine forward or reverse to maintain position of the boat and orientation that is the heading of the boat short kicks with the rudder forward or have to maintain position while you're being blown out and then you can get away from the dock when you clear those other boats that's the simplest departure you have another one where you have wind blowing onto the dock and here you're being pinned against the dock with the wind you have fore and aft boats obstructing your your departure and there are two procedures for for doing this one is Stern out procedure and as I say you have opposing wind you have a fender on the battle as well as back here but the one on the bow is vitally important for this procedure you have an after spring line from a bow cleat to back here on the dock and what you will do is mode we have right rudder and you'll you'll power forward and this is a slow ahead in order to turn the stern of the boat out now the spring line is going to hold the boat from moving forward but the the propwash on the rudder of course is going to push the stern out and you want to have a deck hand forward with preferably a non collapsing pole that you can use to push off the bow from the from the dock so basically this is swinging the stern out and then backing out this way now with the wind blowing in this way you also once you clear the bow from the dock you also have to worry about this boat here so you have to be prepared to clear this boat as well and use your pole for that so that's a stern out procedure the next procedure is bow out and this is simply the opposite and here you run your spring line from a stern cleat to a dock cleat and you go in reverse gear there's a fender on your Stern and you the boat turns bow out now and you can then motor out between the two I personally prefer the the stern out procedure and you might practice both in order to get proficient with both and find out what you like best so those are two for parallel undocking with opposed wind now the next procedure I'd like to show is heading bow out of a slip and you have to consider the wind in these cases so in this arrangement that I'm showing here here you are coming out of a slip here other slips across your fairway and you want it and you have wind blowing down the fairway and your your desired route is going out this way towards the wind so when you do this the the wind is going to want to prevent the bow from turning at slow speeds and you have to make provisions for that if you have a strong enough wind you may be blown into this dock across the way so the use of spring lines in this case would help with this now this spring line is run so that the line goes from the pipe from your midship cleat around the piling and back around to your holding it on deck now two things about routing this spring line one is notice the direction that it's wrapped its wrapped so that when the boat comes out the spring line will not be crossed it'll it will straighten out into two parallel lines okay in order to accomplish that this bitter end of the line that you're holding in your hand has to be over top of the line of the standing part of the line going out to the piling so this line is coming from the cleat around the piling back to you on deck over top of the standing part and it's in your hand back here now as you come out as you motor out the the person tending this line has to maintain enough tension but not cinch it up tight you're going to serve this line in order to allow the boat to have its freedom to get away from the dock but also you're going to be controlling the turn this person with this spring line will control the turn more than the rudder we'll be controlling it at slow speeds so this is using a spring line to turn into the wind and then once you've done that you rapidly pull this line in from the standing part you have to pull it off the piling now you want to make sure when you set this line up that you don't have any knots in the end of your line you want to make sure that the line is free is free to run off the piling that it's not tangled up with other lines on that piling that it's not jammed up in one of those cleats that's on the piling to hold the line up okay so you want to make sure it's we're going to run free from all that stuff because once you're to this to this point here a the boat is now underway you want to get that line off that piling promptly without getting hung up without it getting hung up on the piling okay so that's heading bail out of a slip with wind opposed to the direction you're going to be turning now here's backing out of a slip bow to end so with this arrangement here's a slit here's here's a dock here here's a finger pier and here's your midship piling and what I would be doing here is using with wind opposed and the fairway Exodus to the right so I want to come and turn my boat the stern to the left so that I can turn to the right and go down the fairway to the right but I have opposing wind to that the wind is trying to prevent me from making that turn out of the slip and going down the fairway with this arrangement I would use two spring lines one is from a balcony coming back to this piling and as before it goes over the standing part and the bitter end is held by a deck crew the one from midship on port here is similar it's going around the piling and back over standing part so that I've got control of the boat in two directions now this is assuming I don't have a dock hand on on the dock if I have a dock hand I can have that per that dock hand handle this bow line and control the bow towards the wind as I back down but if I don't have a dock hand I can use the spring line and as the boat gets to about this position I can release that spring as shown here and gather it in okay and this spring line is now controlling the turn of the boat it's assisting the turn into the wind so it will help me pull the stern around as I pull back with my with my engine in Reverse and once it gets to where it's about ready to clear this piling I can release the spring line and gather it in so there's two spring lines used in this in this operation so that's backing out of a slip to windward and you're trying to turn to go out towards the wind my next operation is backing out of the slips turn to wind so here I have the wind blowing in this direction into the slip or in this direction trying to prevent the boat from turning so normally I would like to be able to just back out and make a turn here from one to two to four but if the wind is holding me in towards the slip the only solution to this really is to to be able to back out far enough so that I can make my turn and here I have to promptly do possibly a a portion of a standing turn in order to make this turn before I'm blown down into this piling here and the if I if I come here I have a question here what is the abort plan if it looks like you're not going to clear the piling if I get down here almost a position three and it looks like I'm not going to clear the piling then my board plan is going to be to back hard back hard and get away as far as I can do a portion of a standing turn here and then and then come on out so this is Stern to win with an opposing wind and I'm coming out the fairway towards the towards the exit and the wind is blowing from the exit okay the next docking arrangement that I'd like to show this is coming into a dock now and this is parallel docking along along a pier and some of your pre docking preparations first off there there are to evaluate conditions to two that that exist if you have the ability to inspect this strange dock beforehand and if you can do it by sure you know before you get on your boat that's a good thing to do to become familiar with what's in that in that slip if you can't do that well you're going to have to call the marina ahead of time for the dock conditions the wind angle and the current that may exist in the vicinity of the dock that you're going to get into you can also do a flyby in your boat that is before you actually go into that slip run by that slip be ready to do a standing turn to get out of that fairway and while you're doing the flyby inspect the pilings for nails and obstructions and so forth so these are a couple of ways in which you can evaluate conditions before actually committing to docking in that particular slip a slip that has a slip that has pilings with nails in it I wouldn't go into it because I mean the dales that nails can do significant damage to your boat then with your predock preparations you also have to have a docking plan skipper decides now that he's got some information on that dock arrangement decides on how he wants to dock and yes to consider the slip location the obstructions the depths the wind direction and so forth and he has to advise the crew and make assignments and also very importantly for all docking procedures you want to have an abort plan so that you don't get trapped without an escape route and in many many cases this is where a standing turn to the right is going to save you but you have to consider wind direction obstructions currents other boats and so forth but have your docking plan prepared ahead of time so if I'm coming into the slip and all of a sudden there's a problem whatever it enters or there's not unusual to have problems be ready to abort and the point of aborting the docking is abort early if you found out that you were coming into that slip and you judge you misjudged your position you misjudge the wind and you find you feel that you're in the wrong position for getting properly into that slip abort early and do a go-around and come back again to finish your docking so let's look at some parallel docking arrangements first off we're going to talk about wind blowing on to dock onto the dock and you're going to stop parallel to the dock a few feet away hold position with rudder and short kicks fore and aft and allow the wind to push you toward the dock okay wind blowing off the dock you're going to use forward spring lines for a hemmed-in dock and you're going to use after spring lines for an open dock and I'll show you diagrams of both of these now in general all else being equal I would prefer to use a port side approach if possible that is the boat the slip is to the port side of my boat because this allows for better abort route and maneuvering room but I'll show you these so the wind blowing off the dock this is the hardest one forward spring for hemmed-in dock after spring for an open dock so here's a hemmed-in dock and here I want to come into this dock now for there obstructions here and here I want to get into this alcove here on this slip and in order to do this I want to in advance at position one here's the wind blowing off the dock and at position one before position one I want to rig two spring lines or a midship spring and a bow line and the midship spring is going to be have a bowline loop tied in the end and it's going to be long enough to reach the bow of the boat from the midship and the bow line is going to have a bowline loop tied and is going to be cleated to this valley with about six foot lengths on it and the size of these loops depends on whether we have cleats or pilings on the dock obviously the piling takes a greater a larger loop and you want to have a loop that's plenty big enough for that piling and if I have a 12-inch piling I'll generally have about a two-foot loop in that line I want it to be plenty big to be able to get it easily on and off on and off that on and off that piling so in have these lines prepared I have a deck crew up on up forward we're coming in and remember we have wind here opposing us so we're going to come in and we're going to be pointing here and the wind is going to be blowing our bow down as we come over so I'm going to exaggerate my ear heading for about this position so that as I come in and I allow the wind to blow my bow off to the to the cleat on the right and as I get in close to that I put both of these loops both loops both loops on that one cleat or piling it's easier with a piling but you can also do it with a cleat I then once I have those on the deck the deck crew shouts some lines on and you then back the helmsman then backs on the spring line the deck crew adjusts the bow line slacks the bow line only enough to control the bow remember the wind is blowing down this way so he's preventing the bow from blowing out here but he does want not want to be so tight as to take control from the spring line it's a spring line that's in control and the bow line is only preventing the bow from blowing away from the dock and I don't care if the bow blows this far away from the dock or this far away but I don't want it to do is turn the boat around so the bow line is slacked enough to allow the spring line to take control and if you look at the direction of forces here the spring line is pulling in this direction the propwash is pushing forward and pulling the stern back but the net result of those two forces is it's going to gently pull the boat in towards the dock and you can do this at half throttle and just gradually pull in if the wind is blowing really strong you may have to go higher than half throttle but rarely do you have to do that and it's not something you have to do rapidly you can do it the boat is under control now the spring line has got it the bow line is preventing the bow from blowing away you're gently gradually pulling towards the dock once you get that you then get a stern line on and finish up the rest of your of your mooring lines once the boat is lying there against the dock so that's with a forward spring in a an obstructed dock now I have a second arrangement with an open dock that is I have the ability to come in parallel to the dock as shown here I wind blowing off the dock I'm coming in fairly parallel to the dock and I'm going to use a an after spring line on midship midship pleat and as I come in near this cleat I want to get this spring line on that cleat and I power ahead on that spring line I have left rudder now not full left rudder have only enough left rudder to keep the boat heading parallel to the dock and the and the boat will simply gently pull in towards the dock so I use the rudder to control the direction of the boat parallel to the dock but allow the spring to pull it over and then once you're in you rig your other lines your other dock lines so those are a couple of parallel docking arrangements this one for a hemmed-in dock using a forward spring line and a bow line this one for an open dock where I can come in parallel to it okay the next set of procedures I'd like to talk about is a docking bow into a slip and here the basic steps in this are you want to get a windward bow line to the dock you have a forward deckhand to call out your bow distances because the helmsman cannot necessarily judge that from the you're going to make a wide turn to the windward side of the slip to compensate for the bow blowing downwind and I'll show you a diagram of this well let me show you the diagram now a wide turn in a crosswind so here's my slip here's the dock here's my slip between the pilings and here's the wind blowing this way a crosswind on the slip I want to come in wide so that I come in wide enough so that my Stern is up to windward of its final position in the dock and I actually come in pretty pretty broad of the slip depending on the strength of the wind and allow the wind to pull me down even if I have to allow the Ballad blowdown and even if the stern hangs back the stern will eventually come down once I'm in here but I want to come in bra it on that slip I don't I do not want to come in here because I'll never get my stern in without dragging this piling okay let's go back and look at our list so that's the concept of make a why turn to windward of the slip then within a stern wind blowing into the slip this is going to increase your boat speed and make stopping harder you're going to be going faster than you think you are you have to make sure that you get your spring line on promptly to be able to stop the boat ahead wind blowing out of the slip makes control the boat more difficult as the bow slows down to a stop also the fact that if the wind is blowing from ahead and it's fickle that is sometimes it's blowing from your right and sometimes blowing from your left it kind of confounds your plans for for how you're going to approach that so wind blowing out of the slip is is difficult for two reasons one it makes control of the bow more difficult and also it confounds your plans and then a stern wind is difficult because it speeds the boat up and has you going faster than you think you are and a crosswind you have to compensate for in this manner okay so let's talk about backing into a slip now backing into a slip there's a couple of principles to keep in mind in all of these scenarios that I'm going to show to you you're going to position the boat to windward of the slip and stopped with a bow angle towards the wind before you start to back in let's go over that again the boat is going to position windward of the slip and stopped with a bow angle toward the wind before you start to back in port side approach to slip is preferred over starboard side approach as it gives more maneuverability and a better abort route and I think you'll see this as we look at these scenarios so let's look at the first scenario of backing into a slip port side approach now let's look at this whole arrangement this is no wind in this situation here's the dock here are the pilings of the of the slip and I'm going to end up here position four in the slip so I'm approaching this port side to the slip so here's a slip and I'm coming in from this direction and I have my boat the port side of my boat facing the slip this is the preferred if all if all else if you're able to do it so I'm going to come here and with no end I'm going to make it a turn roughly 45 I'm going to make this turn with a short kick ahead because I don't want to speed the boat up but at position one I'm going to essentially stop the boat I'm going to be come to a full stop then I'm going to go right rudder gave a kick ahead to turn the boat when I do that it's also going to move the boat up to this position I then begin my backing when I'm still here I keep the rudder in right rudder I do not change my rudder what a lot of people will do is try to steer the boat in Reverse with the rudder but the issue is the boat is not going fast enough for the rudder to be effective in Reverse so the time it takes for you to shift the rudder right left right left you've basically lost the timing of the docking procedure so I recommend to people to keep the keep the rudder full to the right start your backing and the boat is now going to start coming back and when you do this the boat Matt this corner of the stern may actually end up right about here so when you're still about two feet from that piling you're going to kick ahead the bull kick ahead a hard kick ahead full full throttle but get it off promptly 1 2 3 neutral in doing that you're going to move the boat a little bit forward but you're going to move the stern appreciably to the left and you're actually going to take that kick off before the stern is where you want it to be because that Stern is going even when you go back to neutral that Stern is going to continue to move left because of momentum of the boat inertia of the boat and I I now back more and if I'm not going to clear this piling I do another kick ahead whether I do a full kick or a short kick depends on how far I have to go but basically I do another kick to clear this piling now once I get the starboard corner quarter of the of the stern to clear that piling I keep backing in even if the boat is still angled like this or even angled more because depth in the slip is money in the bank the further I am into the slip even if angled the better off I am so even if I come in nestled against the piling if I previously verify there are no nails in these pilings and I've got good rub rails on the boat I can nestled against the piling it's okay but once I get into this depth I can do another kick and straighten the boat in order to clear this next piling so I do alternate kicks and then slow reverse kick slow reverse kick slow reverse until I get myself angled right while I'm doing this once the stern is to this point your deck crew can get a line on this piling and bring it to the bow if it doesn't reach the bow bring it to the midship cleat and help control the boat as you're backing in when the boat is now far enough into the slip that you can get that line to the bow cleat bend it around the bow cleat and again hold tension on it this is just turned on the cleat and you're pulling tension on it as the boat is as the boat is backing in same thing is done on portside you get both of these bow lines on and one deck crew once those lines are on holds tension on those lines as the boat is is backed in and keeps pulling on those lines around these cleats and another deck crew if you have the luxury of - deck crew gets a another line on this piling for a spring line so you now have two bow lines and the spring line the spring will control the depth in the slip and the helmsman talks to the spring line tender and tells the spring line tender when to stop the boat when he says stop the boat the spring line tender is going to cinch you up on that spring line cleat it and you're going to tell the helmsman that that spring line is cleated I keep the engine in Reverse in slow reverse to maintain tension on that spring line what a lot of people want to do once they have this line on and the bow lines on they want to kill the engine don't do that keep the engine on it maintains tension on this spring line if you take if you put the engine in neutral the boats going to walk back out of the slip because these lines are stretched and they're going to begin pulling it so I want to keep tension on this line with engine maintained in Reverse now adjust my bow lines to Center the bow spring line is controlling the depth engine is still running in slow the boat is very stable and you can now step off and get your stern lines on the stern lines are the absolute last thing that you have to worry about and often somebody on the dock wants to be helpful and they want to hand you there's your sprint your Stern lines and basically they interrupt your deck crew from doing what they should be doing so this is one of these areas where you have to maintain a clear focus on what you're doing and don't let somebody on the dock deter you from what you should be doing so this is backing in poor side approach no wind here's one of our classes backing into a slip they are they are at this point they're well they're positioned too roughly in this photograph and here's their slip here their slip is here and they're going to be backing into this slip that's going in this direction basically they're backing towards this piling right at this point okay and is that crew is getting ready to put the bow line and the spring line on the pilings okay here's backing in with the wind blowing from ahead now I'm again doing portside approach here's the slip I'm coming down the fairway this way the wind is blowing from ahead and the difference between this and the previous docking with no end is where previously I did my my turn and ended up here I want to now be windward of the slip you recall my rules I want to be windward of the slip and turned now depending on the strength of the wind determines how far you turn if the wind is blowing 12 or 15 knots I'm only going to do about a 10 degree turn because the wind is going to turn me the rest of the way as I do my backing if I have a 5 knot wind I might turn 30 or 40 degrees before I back in I would rarely with win from a head turn more than 40 degrees but basically I want to be in this position when I start my backing in now the boat the wind is going to be setting the the boat down is going to be turning the bow and turning you towards this slip and you may have turning your stern towards us piling and this is now a matter of judgment and practice but you want to end up to win with a slip your deck crew is going to get this midship line on once they get to this piling pull on it to help prevent the bow from blowing downwind and one of the things that the helmsman has to do is he as they're backing in is pay attention to where your bow is now here's the only time that you may shift your rudder if the bow does not cross the center line of the slip I would maintain right rudder through this entire procedure but if the helmsman sees the bow approaching centerline and crossing center line of the slip I would then immediately shift to left rudder and here's the reason for that if the bow is to the left I want right rudder because my boat is going to be backing on this angle and I'm going to be have to I will have to be prepared to kick ahead to clear these pilings as I come in but once the bow crosses centerline I'm now going to be backing this direction and I want left rudder to clear these pilings but keep in mind once the bow crosses centerline of the slip you are approaching a abort conditions you once across the centerline of the slip if you don't have this line on the midship you may have to abort okay because once it crosses the centerline and the wind is blowing there's really no way to get that bow back up to windward without going hard on this piling okay so this is backing in port side approach win from a head okay here's backing in portside approached wind from astern now here's a slip here you are approaching the slip your portside approach but I've got wind in back of me trying to speed me up and blow me past that slip so what I want to do in this case is turn the boat remember I want to position the boat to windward of the slip turn towards the wind the only way I can do that with this approach is to do a standing turn at this point from one to two and actually turn the boat through 90 plus 45 135 degrees or almost 180 degrees if the wind is strong I may have to turn the boat where I've turned or I'm only 10 degrees off the wind if it's a strong wind and I may have to start this turn way back here okay so depending on the strength of the wind determines where you do this and determines how far you turn before you start you're backing in but what I want you to notice is the symmetry there's wind from astern you end up a position to your position to windward the symmetry of this with this arrangement you're to windward of the slip or the wind was from a head you simply had to make a 10 or 20 or 30 degree turn but with wind from astern we had to turn almost completely around to have the boat in the right position to begin our backing in okay so that's a other wat once up to this point the procedure is the same now let's look at the next arrangement where I have backing in starboard approach I'm now approaching the slip from the starboard side okay and this procedure is exactly the same as the the port side approach I'm still going to end up to windward of the slip at position to how far I turn depends on the strength of the wind the only difference between this and the port side approach is that with the port side approach I have the prop walk in Reverse pulling me to the left in this arrangement I have the prop walk in Reverse pulling me to the left also but it's pulling me towards the slip as opposed to the previous one is pulling me away from the slip okay but otherwise this and this are are very similar except for the effects of prep of prop walk okay and then once it to this point and I get this midship line on and I back on it fine the procedure is the same now the next procedure will turn it will stand your hair on end because this is backing in starboard approach wind from astern here's my slip I'm approaching with wind to stern I have to end up at position 4 which is similar to position 2 in the previous procedures but the only way I can get there is with a standing turn to the right and here I have to do a more than a 3/4 turn in order to get in this position once I'm 2 is positioned four I can then use my midship spring and help control the bow of the boat so let's do go back and review these for banking in procedures here's backing in no wind I basically made my turn lined up with the slip backed in here is wind from a head I came to the windward side of the slip begin my backing wind from astern I had to turn through three-quarters of a turn before the slip and in this case starboard approach similar to port side approach except for the effects of prop walk wind from a head and my next one is starboard approach wind from astern this is the hardest of all doing a three quarter turn or more to start my back again now if you have really strong winds or let me mention these other wind conditions for backing in if the wind is blowing into the slip this is the most challenging wind condition that you can have because as I'm backing in I have the wind blowing into the slip it's on my bow and oscillations in the wind I keep you guessing in other words I'm backing in and for one moment the wind is on my starboard bow the next moment is shifts to my port bow and it it it has differing effect on what it does with the bow of the boat is I back into the slip wind blowing out of the slit while backing in is the easiest wind direction because it weathercocks the boat to line up with a slip centreline now in strong winds we use what I call a Waterman spring line and that is this first off it requires the that you have a clean piling with no nails in it it also requires that there's not another boat in this adjacent slip with with their bow or stern sticking out to obstruct you so you need you need the room to do this but this is what the Waterman on Chesapeake Bay commonly used to bring their fishing boats in single-handed to a dock and they'll come in and they'll lay against this piling put a spring line like this hold tension on on this line and they'll be in Reverse and they'll control the tension in order to turn the boat in a controlled manner into the slip and here's a photo of Rita doing a Waterman spring line anything if she has that she has it wrapped the opposite direction she has a line coming from the cleat around the piling and she's pulling it this way which is okay the diagram here shows you on the piling and pulling it around the cleat either one either way is okay but they're doing a Waterman spring line in this in this arrangement so those are methods of getting a big boat into a little slip now let's summarize all that we've gone through and first off you have to understand the forces that act on a boat during the docking procedure understand the effects that wind has the current has prop wok propwash rudder action right or left and so forth learn how you can control these forces and don't look at the wind necessarily as an enemy the wind can actually be a benefit while your docking if you know what is doing and how to deal with it you want to remain a for the effects of the wind and the current that is when you're backing in your you want to pay attention to the bow of the boat what is the bowel doing at the present time you slow speeds during docking look at the bubbles in the water make sure you know whether or not the boat is stopped or whether it still has way on and as I say pay attention to your to your bow and practice practice practice now if you practice practice practice and you get that big boat into a little slip you're going to be happy happy happy at the results so these two ladies just back this boat in and they're very happy about the whole thing you

Channel: Maryland School of Sailing

Views: 941,705

Rating: 4.8024116 out of 5

Keywords: boat docking, single engine boats, Tom Tursi, ASA118, ASA Docking, boat

Id: PoGMAEjiHmU

Length: 82min 3sec (4923 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 17 2013