Disastrous Docking

I am thinking I should rename this blog "The Docking Chronicles". So much of it is focused on docking these days. I guess it makes sense since our boat is tied to a dock and every time we use the boat it requires leaving the slip and returning to it. Breeze On is a much bigger boat than we have ever owned and the style of slip is not what we have known. When I wrote my last post I was feeling very hopeful that I was really getting the hang of docking. That all came crashing to a halt two days ago.

My mother and brother arrived for a visit on Tuesday afternoon. They had never seen our new town or condo and really seem to like both. They were also looking forward to going for a sail on Breeze On. The weather looked good Wednesday morning so we packed a lunch and motored out of the marina by 10 am. The winds were a steady 7-9 knots from the East and we were sailing downwind on the Choptank River. My mom was in a comfortable position in the cockpit and kept commenting how nice it was.

 

My brother did most of the driving.

We ate a leisurely lunch in the cockpit before turning around to head back to Cambridge. We encountered a number of sailboats around Oxford and realized they we all racing. We tacked to avoid getting too close to the finish line. We remembered how irritated we used to get when cruisers would get in the way of our race.

We were going upwind on the return and the winds increased to over 10 knots at times. I was a little worried about docking, but not terrified. We were all enjoying the lovely day of sailing.

Before we entered the marina we discussed our docking strategy. The easterly wind was a cross wind for our slip. I planned to motor past the slip and back in, turning to starboard. I planned to begin turning into the slip from a point beyond it to allow for the wind to push me back. I didn't make it my first attempt so aborted and turned to starboard, toward the end of the fairway. I had to put it hard into reverse to avoid hitting the end of the fairway. I then slowly began approaching the slip and turning into it. It seemed as if I had gone too far past it and wasn't drifting into it as I thought I would so I decided to abort again. Since it had been nerve-wracking to turn toward the end of the fairway I decided to turn toward port. BIG MISTAKE. My decision to turn toward port meant I was abeam of the wind attempting to turn into the wind. In spite of turning up the throttle and using the bow thruster I was quickly being pushed toward the pilings on the opposite side of the fairway. I hit the pilings and broke a line hook. My memories of what happened next are very cloudy. I was pinned broadside against the pilings and couldn't move unless and scraped against them even more. My husband and brother were attempting to fend off (dangerous). I felt panicked and helpless. I was using the bow thruster to try to get us off but it didn't seem effective. I remember feeling as if anything I did would make things worse. I shouted "I can't do this!" and "I don't know what to do!" several times. We broke two or three line hooks off of the pilings. We came awfully close to the anchor of one of the boats. After a few minutes of this the bow came off of the pilings enough that my husband said to put it hard into forward and pull away. I did and asked him to take the helm. I felt just awful. Really, really awful. I knew I had damaged the boat and was afraid to see how much. In fact, it took two days to gather the courage to even look at the starboard side. After a few minutes of my husband driving around we decided to put Breeze On at the end of our T-dock. It wasn't ideal since the wind would be pushing us against the dock, but it was better than repeating the last fiasco. I took the helm but asked my husband to direct me in. I no longer had any confidence in my ability to dock. We were, however, able to get it to the dock without doing any more damage.

The experience was so far beyond my level of comfort that my first thought was we should sell the boat. I never, ever wanted to take a chance of repeating that experience. Part of me wanted to talk about what happened and what we could learn from it and another part of me didn't want to think about it or talk about it ever again. I didn't sleep well at all that night and kept replaying what happened over and over in my head.

My husband was so supportive and we did talk about what we could do (other than sell the boat or never take it out of the slip again) and decided that we should:

1. Take docking lessons. We had talked about this before but decided that reading and practice should be enough. Now we are definitely going to take lessons.
2. Move the boat to a more protected marina until we are more experienced and capable.
3. Continue practicing maneuvers. I especially need to practice stopping the boat so that I don't have to rely on moving so slowly. When it is breezy I tend to drift when I am moving slowly. I don't have enough confidence to move fast now but if I know I can bring the boat to a stop I might be more willing to use more throttle.

In addition, I would like to add rub rails to the boat. It didn't come with them. I inquired about adding them but our broker told us that it couldn't be done after market. We spoke to someone yesterday who told us it could be done and showed us some his yard just installed. My husband isn't convinced we need them but I would feel much better if we had them.

So, what was the carnage?? I finally took a look when we returned to the boat at 6 am this morning to move her into her slip when there was no wind.

It wasn't as bad as I feared.

This is the worst section. There is s black mark with a scratch about 1/8" deep.

 

In addition to the scratch pictured above there are about five other scuff marks along the side.

We have arranged for private docking lessons on our boat.

Stay tuned for more Docking Chronicles.

 

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