Coaching on Undocking/Docking in Annapolis

[thomcat]

I got the inboard motor on new-to-me Catalina 27 running and am excited to take it out for its first sail, but after attempting a test drive I've realized that I and my crew (my dear girlfriend) need some practice undocking/docking. I wanted to post here and see if anyone in the Annapolis area would be willing to take an hour or two out of their day to show some new sailors the ropes, in exchange for a lunch and/or drinks? Feel free to message me and I can provide more details if anyone is interested.

[TrentePieds]

Thom:

If you get no takers to your request for on-board instruction, sing out, and I'm sure we can talk you through it. It's not difficult, just unfamiliar.

Give us an idea of how your boat is moored. Maybe a little diagram? Is she at a fingerslip? If so, bow in or bow out?

I'll also gladly explain to you how you get back into your slip, easily and elegantly with no need whatever for any kind of anxiety.

All the best :-)!

TrentePieds

[Enfant Du Vent]

Ahoy thomcat:;
As the longtime owner of a sailboat I would like to repeat something I was told years ago:


You can learn how to steer a powerboat in an hour and how to dock it in a day.
You can learn how to sail a boat in a week--but you'll spend the rest of your life
learning how to dock it.

[Love and Luck]

I’m too far away to offer practical help, but the best way to learn is repetition. After you have someone out for the afternoon, do it over and over again. If you only leave and dock once per outing, it will take longer to get comfortable.

It is the wrong time of the season for it, but late this season and early next, spend some time “rubber docking”. Pull in and pull out of empty (and obviously unused) slips, pull up alongside the end of a pier, then do it again with the other side of your boat. This time of year, spend some time just maneuvering the boat in open water. Spin around in circles paying close attention to the turn radius and what specific spot on deck is the center or pivot point of your turns. If you pass a marker or buoy in an area that is deep enough and not in a busy area, play games, i.e. “I’m going to place that stanchion on my boat within 5 feet of that mark,” “Now I’m going to do it backwards.”

Think about it more as learning how to maneuver your boat to a precise point than learning how to dock and you’ll see many opportunities to practice.

[Enfant Du Vent]

Ahoy thomcat:
Here's a neat trick I learned somewhere along the way:


Docking if there is a strong cross wind:
(Not for a narrow slip, but when there is lots of space downwind of the dock)
If you try to come in parallel and get blown off when you slow down, one option is to come in bow first to the dock. First, jump onto the dock and secure the bow line. Second, get back on board and lead a very long stern line outside all the rigging, take it onto the dock and walk down the dock to where you want to secure it. Third, get back on board and leisurely winch the stern in. Fourth, pour a drink and relax.

[NYSail]

At my slip I always went in bow first……. Easy to flow with momentum. Leaving backing up into a larger space you’ll learn how the boat pivots.

[bensolomon]

Thom,

I'm in Rock hall and sail to Annapolis regularly. I'd be happy to help. I'll DM you. In the meantime.....if you are stern to, when getting ready to leave the dock, take your spring line from a midship cleat, around a dock cleat past the stern, and then cleat to your stern cleat or primary winch (this is what I do as a single hander). Put your engine in gear, idle rpm, and wheel turned so that the prop wash brings the bow close to the dock. Now, take all other dock lines off.

You will hold fast to the dock, and now will have only one line to deal with. Take your time, throttle up gently, unclear the line and your partner can pull in that single line as it slips around the dock cleat as you are leaving.

When you come back, the only line you need to secure to the dock is this same line, and do the same process, but this time you'll be attaching dock lines, not removing them.

If you are bow to, it is the exact same process, but instead of a dock cleat, you may have to wrap a pilon with that spring line.

All the best,
Ben

[thomcat]

Thank you all for the advice! I've had one kind individual offer some in-person assistance, but I thought I would also post some more details here and see what you all think of my plan of action (as TrentePieds suggested).

I've attached a diagram (not to scale ) which shows the general arrangement. During my first time docking after getting the motor running, I came down the fairway and past my slip and tried to reverse back into the slip stern-to (with the slip on my starboard), but lost control of the bow. My plan going forward is to reverse all the the way down the fairway, past my slip slightly (so it will be on my port), kick the bow out, and reverse in with the propwash helping me get my stern into the slip.

This seems like a theoretically good plan (depending on wind), but I'm not sure of what lines are important to get on in what order. I have a bow line on each piling and spring line on the port-side piling. My boat doesn't really have a mid-ship cleat that would be good for the spring line - the middle cleat is ~5 ft forward of the stern cleat, still inside the cockpit. Is that suitable for the spring line? What do you think of the overall plan?

[sailingharry]

Originally Posted by bensolomon

You will hold fast to the dock, and now will have only one line to deal with. Take your time, throttle up gently, unclear the line and your partner can pull in that single line as it slips around the dock cleat as you are leaving.

This is good advice. But a big word of caution. For this operation, or any other time you want to be able to let go of the line and pull it around a cleat or piling back to the boat (and this is a common practice), it is critical to be sure that the end you let go has no knots or loops or anything else that can get caught. It is amazing how easily a loop will get caught when you're trying to pull it in.

[ranger58sb]

Originally Posted by thomcat

I've attached a diagram (not to scale ) which shows the general arrangement. During my first time docking after getting the motor running, I came down the fairway and past my slip and tried to reverse back into the slip stern-to (with the slip on my starboard), but lost control of the bow. My plan going forward is to reverse all the the way down the fairway, past my slip slightly (so it will be on my port), kick the bow out, and reverse in with the propwash helping me get my stern into the slip.

This seems like a theoretically good plan (depending on wind), but I'm not sure of what lines are important to get on in what order. I have a bow line on each piling and spring line on the port-side piling. My boat doesn't really have a mid-ship cleat that would be good for the spring line - the middle cleat is ~5 ft forward of the stern cleat, still inside the cockpit. Is that suitable for the spring line? What do you think of the overall plan?

Can't say, yet. Which direction does your prop walk (not prop wash) work. I ask that specifically in case you don't yet know what prop walk is, what it does, what it has to do with direction, and why you should care.

You can usually use a spring line on any cleat; doesn't have to be amidships. The "spring" part is the active description; where it attaches to the boat is boat dependent.

I'm sorta busy fixing our boat, but I'm local and sometimes I can get some time off, might be able to help. Or I can kibitz from online or PM or whatever. I'm more focused on powerboats, but the single-screw trawler we had once would in some ways dock like your boat does.

-Chris

[leecea]

My plan going forward is to reverse all the the way down the fairway, past my slip slightly (so it will be on my port), kick the bow out, and reverse in with the propwash helping me get my stern into the slip.

Since you have a fin keel boat it should be controllable in reverse. Here's is what we do...
- reverse all the way down the fairway and keep reversing right into the slip
- use minimum speed needed to have good steerage in reverse
- stop the boat in the slip with forward gear
- we keep our bow lines on the dock/pilings and my wife can hook them with a boat hook from around aft of midships as I back in, then she walks forward and controls the bow. Wind direction will tell you which bow line to catch.
- once I've stopped the boat, I do a stern line and we're safe.
- do the rest of the lines as needed

Wind and tide will be the big factors making this easy or difficult and that can change each time you come in.

If you have a place to practice - something like an empty mooring ball is a good target - try these things
- back the boat towards the ball and stop the boat as if the ball was the end of your slip
- back the boat so the ball is on your port side and turn around it as if it was the piling at your slip's entrance

Don't get too close and catch the pennant in prop!!!

If you like online learning, I did the theory part of this and found it useful: https://www.nauticed.org/sailing-cou...ng-under-power

[TrentePieds]

I would like to be able to give you some very specific advice set out so in such a manner that you can follow it step by step by step with absolute confidence.

To do that I need to know whether your Cat27 is tiller steered, as they all were originally, or whether she's been converted to wheel steering. This is important because it determines where your gear shift and throttle lever are mounted. I also need to know if you have a single lever control for the engine, or if the shift and throttle are separate levers. So get back to me on that.

Until I get that, let's slip in some talk about mooring lines and stuff :-).

The following can be argued about, so I'm gonna tell you how I do things in a thirty-footer, and you can adapt it easily enough to a 27-footer. I have a centre cleat on the foredeck - a horncleat -, and a horncleat on each quarter. I do not have midships cleats at all. What I will now describe is the "dead ship" configuration, i.e. the configuration TP is in when all is shut down, and she is left unattended. This is the configuration I always strive to return to in foreign slips also. In my home slip I moor to a floating dock. You moor to pilings, and I'll come back later to why that difference is important.

When "dead ship", TP has "breastlines" from the forward cleat to the dock and from one quarter cleat to the dock. "Breastlines" are (by definition) perpendicular to the ship's centreline. She has "springlines" leading from the foot of the lifeline stanchion nearest midships. One springline leads forward to about the point where the forward breastline is belayed on the dock, and the other leads aft to about the point where the after breastline is belayed on the dock. So there you have the "proper" (conventional) terminology. If we all use that terminology, we avoid confusion. The purpose of breastlines is to prevent the ship "slewing" (changing her heading) in her berth, and the purpose of springlines is to prevent the ship moving forward or aft in her berth.

While you are preparing to depart your berth, or when you are arriving in it, you use lines that are NOT your breast- or spring lines. breast and springlines have been stowed during your passage. The lines you DO use to get the ship to do what you want it to do are properly called "warps". Warps are your tools to do the job. When you've set your breasts and springs, you stow the warps.

One of the things small boat skippers often have difficulty with, is that Skipper has to be able to control the ship even when he is not at the wheel but somewhere else in the ship. Doing so is called "conning" the ship. Even in ships as small as yours and mine it is essential to learn to do so. Success in doing it depends on having a few - a very few - "commands" that are always used and never varied. You needn't call these commands "orders" since many people object to such "authoritarian" terminology. I call them "requests", but that doesn't alter the fact that they are orders. They MUST be executed promptly and proficiently, and you should make a point of teaching your crew to do that.

Ranger58 picked up on your having "misspoken yourself" regarding prop-wash :-) Let's clear that up: Prop WASH is the "stream of water" that comes off the prop. Prop WALK is the turning moment imparted to the ship as a result of the water at the bottom of the prop sweep having infinitesimally greater density that the water at the top of the prop sweep. Imagine now that you stand behind the turning prop looking at it. If, to drive the boat forward, the prop has to turn clockwise, you have a "right hand prop". If to drive the boat forward, the prop has to turn counterclockwise, you have a "left hand prop".

In all likelihood you have a right-hand prop. Therefore, when you apply power in reverse, the prop WALK will draw the stern to port before the boat begins to "gather sternway". The prop WASH will obviously not impact the rudder, and the rudder is therefore not effective until you've got stemway. That is NOT a problem! It is, rather, a TOOL for you to use. Every boat has a "pivot point". In your boat it lies about a foot aft of the mast. By using prop WALK to your advantage, you should be able to make your boat "do a pirouette" around that pivot point. I have to do that in TP every time I come into my home slip :-)

Duty calls! First opportunity I get, I tell you about the helming and engine orders, and when you let me know how you boat is set up, I will give you a blow-by-blow description of how I would handle her coming into the berth you have shown in your diagram. I'll even give you my reasons for doing it that way. :-)

All the best.

TrentePieds

[bensolomon]

Originally Posted by sailingharry

This is good advice. But a big word of caution. For this operation, or any other time you want to be able to let go of the line and pull it around a cleat or piling back to the boat (and this is a common practice), it is critical to be sure that the end you let go has no knots or loops or anything else that can get caught. It is amazing how easily a loop will get caught when you're trying to pull it in.

Agreed! The line must be free to slip. Harry, thanks for making the point.

Ben

[Davidasailor]

Lots of good advice above. I’d just add this one caution -

Originally Posted by thomcat

My plan going forward is to reverse all the the way down the fairway, past my slip slightly (so it will be on my port), kick the bow out, and reverse in with the propwash helping me get my stern into the slip.

Don’t think of anything as “kicking the bow out”. Boats, unlike cars, always steer from the stern. When in forward the stern kicks in the direction of the tiller (opposite the rudder/wheel), and the boat will pivot around the keel, eventually pushing the bow. In reverse the rudder pulls the stern to one side or the other, and the bow just follows behind. Getting in that mindset is a big part of being able to move the boat the way you want.

[Scrimshaw4]

I'd be more than happy to give you hands on help. Just sent you a Private message.