Here’s some great advice from Practical Boat Owner about how to tie up at a dock, and then how to leave it, even if you’re single-handing. It tells how to plan for the effects of tide and current and the presence of nearby boats, and how to use slip lines to help you get underway.

Casting off with confidence – safe ways for solo sailors to get off the dock Duncan Wells describes a number of easy methods to leave the dock with both sail and power vessels

Getting a boat on and off the dock – coming alongside and casting off – can be stressful and, done badly, the experience can ruin a perfectly good weekend. Boating is fun and the fun is improved when skipper and crew are confident doing manoeuvres. The way to confidence is to have some tried and tested techniques up your sleeve and to practise them.The key element in the close quarters manoeuvring – coming alongside or casting off – is the tide, or current. When coming alongside: always moor into the tide or current. That way you can use the tide as a brake. When I say ‘moor into the tide’ I mean point the bit of the boat that you want at the uptide end of the slot or berth into the tide. So, if you are going to moor stern to, then it is your stern you will point into the tide or current. If bows to, then it’s the bows that you point into the tide.If you moor with the tide or current, you will have no way of stopping without using your engine. But the minute you put the engine into neutral the tide will take over and run you through your berth or, if alongside, into the boat ahead.

Coming alongside under control

Travelling at 2 knots through the water against a 1 knot tide, you are going 1 knot over the ground. You are in control and can use the tide as a brake.

Travelling at 2 knots through the water with a 1 knot tide behind, you are going at 3 knots over the ground and are out of control and cannot use the tide as a brake.

Getting off the dock

The same goes for getting off the dock. For me, I back out and so I like to do this when the tide is pushing me out of my berth. That way I have control. Of course it is possible to back out of your berth with the tide pushing you into it but you do need to give yourself plenty of clearance before going ahead to exit into the fairway.

The key is to be aware of what the tide will do to your boat. The wind, too. We should make ourselves aware of what the tide will be doing to us long before we arrive at the boat. And at our home berth we will have worked out exactly what the tide does at any given hour.

We will only really see what the wind is doing when we walk along the dock to our berth. We will have a forecast for the day, of course, but for the specifics of how the wind will affect us when we come to leave the berth, the wind indicators on our own boat and the boats around us will give us a precise picture of how we need to approach matters. Read more:

https://www.pbo.co.uk/seamanship/casting-off-with-confidence-easy-ways-for-singlehanders-to-get-off-the-dock-62624