THE UNHERALDED SKILL CAPTURING A PILING

Have you ever watched a news clip of a professional sports team’s practice with players and coaches running about, engrossed in activities that seem to have little, if anything, to do with the game itself?  I am sure the skills taught in those drills make the players better at playing the game, but for the life of me I cannot tell how or why.

Boating has its version of those drills, and it involves line handling.  Although line handling seems to be nothing more than an afterthought to boat handling, it can make or break your boating experience on every outing.

For those new boaters who have never really given line handling much thought, but have otherwise lived a somewhat normal, active life, the closest terrestrial life experience to handling a line on a boat is working with a pesky garden hose or a way-too-long electrical extension cord.  It doesn’t take long when you try to coil or retrieve a hose or cord to figure out that it can quickly become twisted and difficult to control.  Yet another inanimate object that defies your most well-meaning intentions to keep things neat and tidy.  Twists, turns, figure 8s, and even a few unsolvable enigmas can become embedded throughout the length of the material.  So too with dock lines, anchor lines, and just about any other type of rope that has made the transition to a line by coming aboard a vessel. 

The best way to minimize your line frustration for the balance of your life is to aggressively seek to master the nuances of nautical lines.  Here are the skills in which you must become proficient.  Trying won’t get it, you have got to do it: 

• Coiling a line in your hand
• Throwing a line so that it plays out on its way to its destination
• Catching a line
• “Capturing” (i.e., getting a line around) a cleat or piling

Coiling a Line – involves using one hand to lay the line in your other hand while creating loops in the line that falls below your line-holding hand.  Sounds easy, and it can be.  Or it can be very difficult depending on the type of line (e.g., polypropylene, twisted nylon, double braided nylon, hemp, etc.) and the condition of the line when you start (twisted or not).  The trick is to take the twist out of the line before putting it in your hand.  You do that by using your fingers to actually twist the line in the opposite direction of any existing twists in the line just before putting it into the hand holding the line and creating a loop.  If there are no pre-existing line twists, consider yourself lucky because then you do not need to manipulate the line with your fingers before laying it in your other hand.  If the existing line twists are extensive, you can twirl the rope in the opposite direction of the existing twists using your whole arm, sort of like drawing circles in the air with the line.  The idea is to chase the twists out past the end of the line, thereby allowing the line to lie flat and be gathered into loops without tying itself into knots.

Throwing a line – is easy if the line has no twists in it.  Simply take the end of the line in one hand while holding the balance of the coiled line in your throwing hand.  With a smooth, long, underhand motion throw the coiled line to your receiver who should have his or her arm outstretched so that the line drapes across his or her arm for an easy, injury-free transfer of the line from one person to the other.  In an ideal world, the line will uncoil as it passes through the air to the recipient.  A twisted line (i.e., one with “figure 8s” in it) will head away from the thrower and the kinks in the line caused by the twists will stop the line short, keeping it from reaching its intended target. 

Catching a line – is the compliment to throwing a line.  It does not matter how well the line is thrown if the recipient can’t catch and control it before it falls into the water or gets pulled from the dock.  Ideally, the line will drape itself across the receiver’s outstretched arm allowing it to be picked up with a free hand.  The receiver should avoid wrapping the line around his or her outstretched arm.  If an arm becomes entangled in the line and the boat to which the other end of the line moves away from the dock, the receiver might get pulled off the dock.  In other words, make sure that a secure fitting or piling, not a person, is used to take the strain on the line.

Capturing a cleat or a piling – is often the first and most critical step in safe docking.  It starts with making sure that the length of the mooring line you are using is greater than twice the distance between the target on the dock and the cleat on the boat.  Otherwise, success will not be unlikely, but impossible.

The process begins with attaching the line to a cleat on the boat and then coiling the balance of the line as noted above.  The idea is that, when you are finished capturing the cleat or piling, you will have both ends of the mooring line on the boat.

Next, put the non-cleated end of the line in your non-throwing hand leaving most of the loops in the throwing hand.  Then, with a motion reminiscent of spraying water from a hose onto a garden (i.e., a motion with a considerable amount of horizontal movement), throw the line over the cleat on the dock or the piling rising above the dock.  Timing is everything in the execution of this move.  The line must be released on the throwing arm side of the target, and then the horizontal arm movement will carry the balance of the line to the other side of the target.  If done correctly, the throw will leave the line running behind the cleat or piling; some of it on one side of the target and the balance on the line on the other side.  Then, gather the slack in the line and you have captured the cleat or piling, and you can continue your docking maneuver, with the help of your engine, in full control of your vessel.

Now, it does not seem like life experiences like coiling a hose or extension cord or watering a garden will have any impact on your success as a boater, but if docking is part of what you do as a boater, they certainly will.