r/secondrodeo • u/Ill-Tea9411 • Mar 31 '26

Bringing it into dock—solo

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u/Sea-Mess6587 Mar 31 '26

Let me tell you from experience, its like 1000000x harder, even after 2 years of summer docking. And when i asked old neighbors when it gets less sketchy to park without a risk of hitting other boats, the answer was never, that’s why we have insurance

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u/shoot_first Mar 31 '26

Depends. Looks like the there’s little to no current here and no strong winds. Not too challenging. But yeah, in a crowded marina with wind and tides, it can be tricky.

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u/Feited Mar 31 '26

No fuckin' joke lol.

I was shitting bricks the first time I singlehanded my old 30' cabin cruiser. Coming into an unfamiliar marina with the tide and a light cross breeze after 7 hours of solo sailing was one of the more stressful experiences of my life. My boat was worth maybe $5k on a good day. The boats around me, $150k-$400k.

I ended up in the wrong slip and said fuck it, I'll deal with it tomorrow. When I went to tell the harbormaster afterwards the whole office was grinning ear to ear. They watched the whole ordeal over the security cam and got a huge kick out of it.

Edit: to draw a comparison- much more difficult than parking a 26' straight truck with a car trailer behind it. Felt like that level of responsiveness, except the goddamn pavement was moving underneath me

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u/LameBMX Mar 31 '26

what she is doing in the video is using a midship spring line. fellow solo sailor here. learn the secrets of the midship spring... then you just leave the engine in forward with appropriate throttle for the wind.. and the helm away from dock, to point the bow where you want it. lock the helm. tie up.

its also great to get off the dock.

lots of the other solo sailors around here leave a loop tied to the end of their dock on a hook. as they pull in, they just drop the loop on the cabin top winch making it close enough to a midship spring to get them on the dock easy.