Six boathandling skills to make tricky berths easier
Chris Beeson reveals a few easy ways to get alongside a windward berth and get off a leeward berth
If you keep your boat in a marina, or visit marinas regularly, or if you occasionally moor against river pontoons or harbour walls, you’ll understand the truism that, like flight, the riskiest bits of this sailing business are the first and last few metres. Wind and current can combine to make the start and end of any passage quite a fraught affair.
There are two common problems: getting onto a windward berth, and getting off a leeward berth. In the case of a windward berth, unless you’re feeling particularly sporting, you’ll be slowing as you approach, which makes the bow more likely to blow off the pontoon before you can get a line ashore. It’s simply not safe to go leaping off the boat with a coil of mooring line when you think you’re as close as you’re likely to get. You could miss the pontoon and fall in, the pontoon may be slippy, you may stumble and end up in the soup. It’s just generally not a smart thing to do, and there’s no need to do it. A single line and an educated hand on the throttle are all you need.
The inverse applies when leaving a leeward berth. Convention recommends motoring against a spring, which in many situations is successful – as we’ll see – but it’s not without risk in a strong breeze. If you motor against a stern spring to bring the bow off, will the wind blow the bow back in while you’re changing gear from astern to forward, before you’re clear of the boat ahead? If you bring out the stern by motoring against a bow spring, you risk not going fast enough to have steerage way when you attempt to clear the boat moored astern.
There are many ways to skin these cats and we’ll look at six methods that use one line and a judicious amount of horsepower to get safely alongside.