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DOCKING PROCEDURES
From the moment the boat hit the water I was anxious about manoeuvring the boat in tight spaces, especially in marina’s.
When I first visited the marina where I was looking to house Alcatraz the first observation was that the pens are not designed with multihulls in mind, everything is too narrow. It was lucky the marina was not to fully occupied at the time so the management offered me the use of a double berth for the moment
The berths are15 m in depth the fingers are 11m apart, so about 4 m to spare in width. The little triangle to assist walking onto the fingers are a real trap for the transom edge and I have collected it several times and incurred some minor damage.
I now have a fender fixed at the transoms permanently to avoid further damage.
From the start I have always opted to reverse into the pen as I was never comfortable with the forward vision coming into a pen, nor was it conducive to crew getting off securing the boat. By the time they could get off you’d more likely have run the bow into the walkway.
It doesn’t however provide for privacy and you get to know all the visitors/passers by.
My approach was to motor up the lane way to just past my pen and then reverse in backwards using the motors to steer. This worked fine as long as there was no wind, which in my marina, there is most of the time, generally coming from the shore side (port in the picture).
The panic usually started as I came to a stop in the laneway, before reversing. As soon as the turn was initiated the wind would grab the bow and bring it around in an un controllable fashion and on a number of occasions I had to abort the docking procedure, avoid a collision with boats parked across the laneway and escape by going back out of the laneway. Lowering the daggerboard prior to manoevering helped a bit but did not solve the problem, so I got permission from the marina manager, to tie up at a vacant end Tee and wait for milder conditions (generally early in the morning, the next day).
In discussions with more experienced ‘salts’ a suggestion was made to reverse up the laneway and turn without coming to a stop, so as to stop the wind taking control. It worked and the other day my wife managed to get a nice set of sequence shots of the procedure, this was in about 10 knots of wind with occasional gusts.
I
position myself to enter the laneway backward in open waters, by straightening
the rudders, reversing the port engine whilst leaving SB in forward.
Once lined up with the lane I proceed down the lane with both motors just engaged in reverse gear. Any deviations from my intended direction I correct using 1 motor control only (SB) by increasing revs, or clicking into neutral/forward
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Once 1/3 past the finger, SB into forward to initiate the turn |
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Control rate of turn with SB engine, but depending on wind Port might need throttling up a bit |
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Gunning SB a bit in the final part of the turn helps slow down the boat |
If
the wind is coming from inshore I try to position the boat in the centre
of the pen and let the wind drift me in against the finger. If the wind
is opposite I manoeuvre the back step up to the finger for the crew to
step off.
The crew then engages the rear mooring rope to the cleat, after which I can use the motors to push the boat against the fingers if needed. Once the springline is engaged and the forward line cleated the boat is secure.
I have docked the boat in this manner successfully in winds of 15 knots (gusting higher) and no longer find coming back to port an adrenalin rush.
