Seamanship ...

Shore Lines

Floating polypropylene lines are the overwhelming choice. In Chile, poly line comes in 220-meter spools, and cutting these in half to make 110-meter lines guarantees you’ll be able to reach that tree on the other side of the caleta, or cove. We carried four of these lines on deck, flaked into baskets made of plastic mesh. Singlehanders generally seek out anchorages where they don’t need to tie their boats to points ashore. Some doublehanders told us that tying in was too much trouble to be worth it. Two of those crews also admitted to coming within a hair of being driven aground by williwaws while anchored.