Jere Lull wrote:

On 2007-08-12 21:06:01 -0400, "Roger Long" said:

Almost every time I come in now, I can count on seeing a large friendly
fellow walking towards my slip to heave heroically on the top of the
lifeline stanchions to keep the boat from getting close enough that I
can step off instead of jumping or to heave the bow line so tight that
I can't bring the stern in.

We avoid that by having the dock lines on the dock, properly sized with
a spliced loop: Drop and forget. Main one, of course, is the aft spring
which will keep us off the dock under full power (or a storm's winds).
That one's mine, as when it's made, I can put the bow anywhere I want.
We've been accused of having a bow thruster.

Lets us get in quickly enough that the dockmates can't stumble their
way *to* us in time enough to help ;-)

When we are coming into a strange slip, Bob rigs the lines before we
get there. If he knows we are coming into a face dock, he may only
rig them on one side, but most times he does both sides just in case.

[I'm always amazed when I see a boat approach the dock and suddenly
discover that they are going to need lines to tie up with and the
ensuing scramble to find the lines is also amusing. I've even seen a
shrimp boat (that had run out of fuel being pushed into the fuel dock
at Palmer Johnson in Thunderbolt by another shrimp boat) whose hand on
the deck threw the line to the dockmaster without attaching it to his
boat first. He threw the whole line.]

He attaches the lines to the cleats and puts them through the hawse
holes or the fairleads to the outside of the boat and then brings them
up and over the lifelines. That way I can throw a spring line to
someone on the dock, and it will be solidly attached to the boat.

However in our home slip, all the dock lines stay on the dock. There
is no need to throw a line to anyone. We leave them hung on hangers
on the pilings when we leave the slip (fixed dock), or lying on the
dock and I pick them up with the boat hook when we come back in. The
most anyone could do is to throw me a line to catch. He has sewn
chafe guards on the lines where they go through the hawse holes, so I
can then pull them in to the proper length and attach the lines to the
cleats.

We do have to stop the boat way back in the slip so that Bob can get
to the rear dock lines.

In my mind, Bob has too many dock lines, but I'm not going to argue
with him about it because his system works, and if it doesn't, he has
no one to blame but himself.

We have a finger pier on one side (three pilings - one at the end of
the finger pier, one in the middle and one at the end of the slip) and
a full length dock on the other side with a piling at the end and the
middle. He has 4 rear lines (2 spring crossed in the back), and 4
midship spring lines (2 each side), and 4 lines from the bow (2 each
side), and a couple of others in the middle that aren't spring lines.
I think I counted 14 dock lines when we were at the boat last week.

http://home.mindspring.com/~gmbeasle...fterisabel.jpg

This was a picture of the boat at low tide after hurricane Isabel in
2003. The water is still up about 18 inches (knee level) over the
dock. You can just about see the white edges of the dock through the
water and you can't see the finger pier at all. We had taken the
bimini down, but not the sails. The boat that was next to us had been
hauled. I waded out to the boat to see if everything was OK and took
this picture.