How to Spring into a Tight Space on a Dock

Maneuvering your gorgeous sailboat under power in the marina is one of the more important skills to learn. Wind, current and tight spaces can be very intimidating and not knowing all the tricks can lead to expensive mistakes as well as serious ego damage.

NauticEd‘s new paper book titled “Maneuver and Dock Your Sailboat Under Power” is now available on Amazon for just $14.91. We highly recommend it.

The book is loaded with all the scenarios you will encounter and covers topics such as: momentum, prop walk, tight turns, using spring lines, leaving the dock, returning to the dock, high winds and current, and the elusive Mediterranean Mooring.

We have extracted an excerpt that will help you get into a tight space on a teehead.

Springing On and In

Coming up to a Tee-head is a situation where you need to spring on. The need for accuracy in your maneuver is heightened when the space is tight. Here is an animation of a boat doing this.

Spring on Animation

And here are the forces and moment diagrams.

Spring-on Force Diagram

After you make your plan, ensure dock lines are made ready and (very important) that the crew are told exactly which direction to cleat the boat when they get off. In high winds things can go south very quickly. Ensure dock lines are prepared outside of the life-lines. This is a common mistake and a huge time waster at a critical point in the maneuver.

Plan to get the bow of the boat cleated to the dock as shown, and then spring the boat in.

In this exercise to spring in means; once the bow-line is cleated to the dock, you simply turn the wheel away from the dock and apply forward thrust. The water force on the rudder moves the aft of the boat laterally to the dock.

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The innovation that we like in this book is that throughout the book are QR codes as shown in the image above. When reading the book you simply scan the QR code with your phone. The book then comes alive with real animations and video.