Alongside, on a buoy, and in the tender

Every good arrival uses the same trick: approach INTO the stronger of wind or tide, so the water itself is your brake. Head into a knot of tide and you can hold the boat stationary over the ground with the engine just ticking ahead — total control at walking pace. Arrive with wind or tide behind you and the pontoon comes at you faster than reverse gear can politely fix. So before any berth, pause and read the water: flags, other boats’ lie, ripples round piles. The strongest force decides your direction of approach.

Fenders go on before anything else — at the widest point of the hull and where the berth will touch, tied with clove hitches you can adjust one-handed. Lines next, rigged BEFORE the approach: a bow line and a stern line hold her in; the springsspringsThe diagonal mooring lines that stop a berthed boat surging fore-and-aft — and lever her out when leaving.full glossary → — lines led diagonally, bow-area to a cleat aft of it ashore, stern-area forward — stop her surging fore-and-aft along the berth. Springs are the unsung pair: without them she ranges back and forth with every wash; with them she sits still. Step ashore (never leap) with the middle of the line, take a turn, and let the cleat do the holding.

Springs have a second life: leaving a tight berth. Motor gently ahead against a bow spring and the stern levers out; slip the lines and reverse away clean. It is the closest thing to a cheat code in boat handling, and it works because you planned the lines, not because you shoved harder.

One more force hides under the boat: PROP WALKprop walkThe sideways kick a turning propeller gives the stern, strongest going astern — a right-handed prop walks the stern to port.full glossary →. A spinning propeller does not only drive the boat fore and aft, it also kicks the stern sideways — hardest in astern — because the blades bite unevenly like a paddle-wheel. Which way it kicks is fixed by the propeller’s handedness: a right-handed prop walks the stern to PORT in reverse, a left-handed one to starboard. Find yours once, tied alongside, with a short burst of reverse; the stern swings the same way every time. Then stop fighting it and USE it — choose the side to lie alongside so the reverse kick pulls your stern IN to the pontoon as you stop, and pivot in your own length by putting the helmhelmThe steering position (tiller or wheel) — or the person steering.full glossary → hard over FIRST and giving a brief thrust ahead, so the wash over the rudder swings the bow while prop walk tucks the stern. Knowing the kick before the lines are off is an extra hand on the boat.

Picking up a mooring buoy

A mooring buoy is somebody’s pre-laid anchor — usually heavier than anything you carry. The pickup is the alongside approach in miniature: into wind or tide (watch how the OTHER moored boats lie — they are your wind/tide flags), crew on the bow signalling distance, and the boat brought to a dead stop exactly as the buoy touches the bow. Secure to the strop or pickup line if one is fitted, or pass your own line through the ring and back aboard — both ends on your boat, so leaving is a slip not a wrestle. Then do what you did at anchor: settle back, check a transit, and make sure she is riding to it, not dragging it home.

Two cautions: a buoy with no markings is a stranger — you don’t know its chain, its owner or its last inspection, so treat unknown moorings as overnight gambles; and in any tide, expect the buoy to sit at an angle to the wind — believe the moored boats, not your face.

The tender

Statistically, the dinghy ride is the most dangerous boating most crews do — small, low, overloaded, often at night, often after a meal ashore. The disciplines are short: lifejackets WORN by everyone, every trip; the kill cordkill cordThe lanyard that stops an outboard dead if the driver goes overboard. Worn, not draped.full glossary → attached to the driver (not lying in the bilge); no more bodies than the tender is rated for, weight low and centred; oars and a torch aboard at night, and a charged handheld if you have one. Load and board one at a time, holding the painterpainterThe bow rope of a dinghy or liferaft.full glossary → — the tender pinned alongside by hand is stable, the one drifting off with one foot in it is not.

Outboard respect: fuel tap and choke routine learned in daylight, dead-slow near swimmers and other boats’ ground tackle, and the painter made fast before anyone relaxes. None of this is ceremony — it is the same one-force-at-a-time control thinking as the big boat, scaled down to where the margins are thinner.