Docking here is a bitch. And doing it alone is fucking hard.
I decided to move to the Marina yesterday. It was a rough day. Seas were rough, wind was right on our nose all day. Lots of bouncing around. Took 5 hours to go 20 miles. I really think these props that were put on in Fort Lauderdale are either under sized or not pitched right. I just feel like we don’t get the propulsion out of them that we should be seeing.
The marina had sent me a map of where I was going and it looked like a nice easy spot to get into. From satellite images it looks nice and wide, easy to just make a right and then a left right into the slip. But when I arrived here the current was ripping and the wind was blowing like crazy. Just in Neutral I was moving 2MPH (which is very fast for a sailboat!) I tried to make the right hand turn into the channel and I just kept slipping fast and fast. I nearly ran into a huge Catamaran. I yelled over to the dock hands and said there’s no way I can make it in there myself.
So they moved me to an end slip, I go down there and try to dock and couldn’t get the boat on the dock, the current just kept pushing me and pushing me. The dock hand yelled over and said, let it slide back and then come forward. Well, the problem with that is that behind me, where the current is pushing me there’s a big ass sunken cargo ship, prob 100′ away. To my left is a reef.
I slide back as far as I was comfortable and then had to power hard forward into the current to try and get onto the dock. Now for some reason, no idea why, I am being pushed ONTO the dock. My boat slams onto the dock of course missing all the fenders I had out. I throw the bow line and stern line to the dock hands and they tell me to get the bow off the dock and move forward more. I try and try to get the bow off but for some reason I just can’t get it off. Everything I do seems to just push it onto the dock harder and harder.
Finally we just get it tied off. But where I am there’s all these fucking speed boats that go flying by creating huge wakes, tossing me onto the dock. I have every fender out I have and yet it seems to be not enough. The boat just keeps hitting the piling on the dock.
The dock master said he wants to move me on Thursday to the slip I’m supposed to be in. But I just don’t have the confidence to do it. And then what if I get in there on Thursday then I have to somehow get OUT of there again Monday. Is it worth it?
I woke up at 2am this morning and couldn’t get back to sleep. I just kept thinking over and over, how can I do this better. How can I get in and out of there. If there were no current, it wouldn’t be a problem. But I watched the tides this morning and it seems there’s like ZERO slack tide times. It just switches from going fast one way to fast the other way.
I laid there in bed last night, just thinking of all the disasters that could happen of me trying to get into or out of that slip…