lio-shai... Thank you for doing this catalog. I do appreciate it and hope it will help others in reviewing this video... Tom

@@mdschoolofsailing u br welcome sir. Your lessons r excellent and very useful

thank you!!!

To the top!

Moving up

Choose the tide to park into your slip backwards, into stream and a light breeze from anywhere other than against stream. Blown-on is good. 2 crew. One for the 1st line. One for roving fender and 2nd line. Stop the boat stern into the stream (out in the river) Stand forward of the helm facing aft. Never move from this helm position. Hold it there. Stationary in relation to pontoons. Glance at the bow sometimes but 90% look aft (where you're going). Practise just with the throttle. Ease and she creeps forward. A tad more revs and she holds. A little more and she creeps backwards into the stream. Keep holding it in reverse against the stream for a long long time. Until voyeurs get bored and wonder off while you really get the feel of hanging her off the prop, equaling the stream. Now driving like a car, turn the wheel slightly slightly left. Wait. She will ferry glide left. Then have a go at ferry gliding right... Forget port/starboard. You're in control. Reverse Ferry glide into your fairway. At first she'll lose against the stream so Increase revs, just momentarily. Turn more and more into the fairway. Use the +/- throttle to stay central. Get nervous? Turn the wheel back toward the river and ferry glide back out. So, the further in and closer to shore, the weaker the stream. Compensate with helm adjustments. You're 45%-70% now and as your slip opens up will need to turn back towards it with a tad more revs. You are moving slooowly into your slip, fewer revs as you go. No matter how slow, because you're into stream you will always have water over the rudder and so steerage and you have a clear view of the finger and the pontoon (end of your berth that you will stop 11 inches away from). Slide her in, slow to a stop and hang off the prop again. Tie off the stern breastline first, hang off it and into neutral. Tie off bow breastline and bow spring. Finished with engine. Stern spring. Kettle on. Remember the bow spring is the aft one and the stern spring is the forward one. Now reread the lines order again.

Ellul Walker thanks for taking the time to respond. Good advise to stand on until one gets the feeling, i’m always trying to rush a bit. Cheers!

@@Dan_C604 I'm slow as drying paint. Those looking for calamity get fed up and stop gawping. Also, I think slow. I like time to see what the the boat wants to do and use that rather than fight it. I like to be going slow enough to have more time and less (wrong) momentum to change if I need to goto plan B. You can always add revs. It's harder to unadd momentum. My own take is a little different. Swap the contingency and mission. Plan A. Go up the fairway, turn the boat and leave the fairway. Keep doing that. (survival confidence) Plan B. When you master plan A, go up the fairway again and if you see a good opportunity to get her in her slip have a go at that. Otherwise complete plan A. Priority is avoiding collision damage, it is not "to park the boat at all costs". Or stick with dive in as soon as you're back, barrel up the fairway, take a flier at the turn point, get it wrong. Use even more revs to undo the momentum. Get screamed at because you didn't allow for drift. Wonder what the plan B should have been that you can never visualise anyway. Get teeboned across bow rollers or worse (because you were giving it manly welly to beat whatever "element was king" ).

Definitely, though wind is a bit more confounding since it can turn the bow.

Josh... We published a video on the Docking Bridle last year at kzfaq.info/get/bejne/kLB2atGjm7quqGg.html

@mdschoolofsailing Great! Just watched it. Very helpful. Thank you! We used your slide show as a handout in our class. Thank you for sharing all your knowledge.

Backing may be easier overall if it's into the wind or for a starboard approach when going forward and the boat has significant prop walk. It avoids the problem of prop walk working with the wind during a turn from bow forward to stern into the slip. In other words it avoids some of the problems of the starboard approach.

Interestingly the technique comes from fishermen on working boats. Perhaps they're less worried about scuffing their paint. ;) Note also that it was intended for heavy winds. Sees like a good technique for getting control of a boat and turning it in heavy winds. A fenderboard or horizontal fender could be used on the piling to protect the boat better.

Took the class about a month ago (loads of fun and super useful; learned lots of stuff not in this video too). Fenders were only used for flat dock work (i.e. springing in/out). But note that those Island Packets have a nice stainless steel rub rail, which is the only place, that contacted the pilings. And at no time should you be sliding on a piling; at most only rotating around one (else it leaves some wood bits in the rubrail screw heads; how do I know?) But I asked the instructor about boats with pretty gelcoat sides and no rubrail in just the right place to protect them from the pilings. He showed me a flat boat fender (Google it; I'd never seen one before), that was aboard the boat just for that case. Another solution for (against?) pilings is fender boards, which I've seen a couple of times. In New York/New Jersey, where I do much of my sailing, docks are different: Chesapeake has a small tidal range, so often docks are fixed, but in my area it's almost a given that they are floating and typical cylindrical fenders rule. But unlike the Med, stern to docking is rare, so usually only two or three fenders are used per side.

Yes. Spring lines use prop wash to spring the boat out, not prop walk. Should work the same regardless of prop direction or which side of the boat is towards the dock.

Me too please!

How about the "pivoted sway turn" described here? cns-alumni.bu.edu/~slehar/Victoria/CaptainsManual.html Will that do it for you?