Rafting up
Rafting up is a handy way of avoiding having to deal with rise and fall, and is often the only option for an alongside berth when piers and pontoons are crowded. It can be a sociable experience; we have made many friends in raft-ups. There are some basic rules.
■ Always try to raft up to a boat that is bigger than yours. A heavy boat rafted outside a smaller, lighter one can place undue pressure on the smaller boat’s hull and mooring lines.
■ Ask permission whenever possible. If rafting to a fishing vessel, find out when she’s leaving – it could be 0400. If there’s nobody aboard, ask around the harbour.
■ Even if the inside boat is well fendered on
its outboard, set up your own fenders too.
■ Put out shore lines of your own fore and aft, and bow and stern lines and springs to the boat inside you.
■ When crossing another yacht to get ashore, always walk round the foredeck, forward of the mast.
■ Always be prepared to allow a boat on the
inside to leave.
■ It is ungenerous and unseamanlike to refuse to have another boat raft up to you, provided that the above conditions are met, and the raft isn’t big enough already.
■ If you’re leaving early, let the new arrival
know.
■ Fenders hung on your seaward side say
‘You may raft up to me’.
Getting ashore can sometimes be a problem, particularly if rafted to a large fishing vessel, or several of them. If they are lying away from the wall it may not be possible to heave the whole raft close enough to reach the ladder safely. It can also be a matter of clambering up tyre fenders hung from the pier.
To allow a boat inside you to leave, the usual procedure is to take your bow and stern lines to the pier or pontoon (or the boat nearer it), with either your stern line being led ahead of the leaving boat or your bow line led astern of her. The leaving boat then lets go all your lines aboard it and slips out: you take in the slack on your lines and reset spring lines. If conditions are difficult or all else fails, simply cast off and come alongside again once the leaving boat has gone.
Some very big rafts can be organised – I’ve seen 15 boats rafted up in one trot at a big race event – but normally, three or four is a comfortable limit. Sometimes a ‘sunflower raft’ is organised at a big rally, with boats rafted in a circle bows-out and anchors set by every third or fourth boat. A sunflower of 191 is believed to be the record, set by the Clyde Cruising Club in 1985 in Loch Drumbuie in Argyll.