docking

Everybody I know hates docking. It's full of surprises. An experienced cruiser told me cheerfully that she and her husband anchored out whenever possible because "we suck at docking". I, a licensed Coast Guard Captain, was glad to hear that. I suck at it, too. However, if you are going in and out of your home dock all the time there are a few things you can do to make it easier. Like put lots of fenders on your dock! And rig up your lines so you can grab them to tie up without getting off the boat. Sometimes that takes some ingenuity, especially with a really short dock. But try to arrange the lines so that you can grab a line and drop the loop over an amidships cleat or if you're solo maybe a sheet winch back by your cockpit.

Everybody knows you shouldn't come in too fast. But don't come in too slow either! You do need steerage especially on windy days.

The amidships cleat or other attachment point really helps. When you snub the line amidships your boat tends to stop parallel to the dock without the bow or the stern coming in. I marked my amidships spring line so I could tell novice crew "grab that one with the black tape first and put it on that cleat there!" This eliminated grabbing the wrong line which otherwise would happen.

Docking when it's windy is always fun. Remember that your bow wants to blow off when the breeze is blowing across the dock. I asked for and got a dock at the marina that the prevailing west winds tended to blow me onto. When we had two boats on docks, we got them side by side so if I missed the dock I would drift down onto our other boat. (I never did, but it was a cheap insurance policy). I also tied up pointed towards the direction of usual strongest winds ( i.e. at the south end of the bay I tied up headed north). Then she blew out of the dock upon departure and coming in the wind helped put the brakes on. Like most boaters I try to avoid downwind landings with my wimpy reverse gear.