Hey all,
I've been reading a lot about docking with a single bow aft or midship aft springline and I've successfully done so on several boats, however, I'm having a lot of trouble getting it to work correctly on my boat, a C&C 99 with a Volvo saildrive.
Attached is a deck layout with the position of the dock cleats (yellow lines), position of a pad eye used to attach a block for the spinnaker sheet (red circle with a pink line), shroud chainplate (red circle), stanchions (blue circles), and bow cleat (lime circle.)
I've basically tried attaching springs running aft to the cleat at the end of the dock from all the places listed above except for the bow cleat because I don't have a dock line long enough.
From any of those locations, in light wind, with the wheel hard to starboard (port tie), unless I rev the engine up to ~1800 RPM I don't get enough pivot to bring the stern in to the dock and actually the stern swings away from the dock when I first engage forward throttle. 1800 seems way too high, even taking in to consideration that the rudder is farther aft from the saildrive than it would be on a shaft drive, to be necessary to hold the stern in to the dock.
My slip typically has a crosswind blowing me off the dock which has caused some issues docking so I really want to get this to work better. I would also potentially use a breast line but the cleat on the dock seems like it's too far forward for that to work (it's just slightly forward of the shrouds when she's all the way in the slip.
Any thoughts or ideas? Is the length of the line or attachment point wrong? It doesn't seem like it should be this difficult.
Thanks, Brian
I've been reading a lot about docking with a single bow aft or midship aft springline and I've successfully done so on several boats, however, I'm having a lot of trouble getting it to work correctly on my boat, a C&C 99 with a Volvo saildrive.
Attached is a deck layout with the position of the dock cleats (yellow lines), position of a pad eye used to attach a block for the spinnaker sheet (red circle with a pink line), shroud chainplate (red circle), stanchions (blue circles), and bow cleat (lime circle.)
I've basically tried attaching springs running aft to the cleat at the end of the dock from all the places listed above except for the bow cleat because I don't have a dock line long enough.
From any of those locations, in light wind, with the wheel hard to starboard (port tie), unless I rev the engine up to ~1800 RPM I don't get enough pivot to bring the stern in to the dock and actually the stern swings away from the dock when I first engage forward throttle. 1800 seems way too high, even taking in to consideration that the rudder is farther aft from the saildrive than it would be on a shaft drive, to be necessary to hold the stern in to the dock.
My slip typically has a crosswind blowing me off the dock which has caused some issues docking so I really want to get this to work better. I would also potentially use a breast line but the cleat on the dock seems like it's too far forward for that to work (it's just slightly forward of the shrouds when she's all the way in the slip.
Any thoughts or ideas? Is the length of the line or attachment point wrong? It doesn't seem like it should be this difficult.
Thanks, Brian