Step1
Boat Docking Practice-pick a buoy or facsimile, and pilot your boat around it in figures-of-eight (assuming deep water on all sides). Try it going ahead and astern, fast and slow, changing direction half way around, and at different angles to the wind and current. Try it using just rudder control, and then using the twin screw effect. See if your rudders and twins can be used together, or whether it's best just to center the rudders and work the throttles alone. Try it when it's calm and when it's windy. Practice in Active Water and Varying Current. Remember the dock is too exposed to waves. Find somewhere else to tie up the boat! (And, even on a calmer day, you wouldn't want to leave a vessel there unattended — the weather could change while you're away, or wakes from other boats could cause trouble.) For the varing current- This is a common situation; there is nothing static about it! The helmsman had better keep the boat moving; keep steering and keep thinking! You'll want to get through the transition zone, between current and no current, as quickly as practical, without being reckless. The main thing is that "forewarned is forearmed" — knowing in advance about this changing current affords the skipper a much better opportunity to cope with it. And always remember “The forces of the current and of the wind may be additive or subtractive. Furthermore, both can change drastically as one nears shore, necessitating a complete change of steering technique during the approach to a dock or mooring. You often just have to figure this out as you go along, especially in an unfamiliar location. Pay close attention, and be prepared to change your tactics, as Nature changes hers.”
Step2
Know how much throttle and steering to use. The control inputs will become smaller and smoother with the passage of time. The line you follow in to the dock may need to be a little more downstream than you would think -- parallel to an imaginary line extending from the dock -- so that the final turn does not, in fact, cause a collision of the bow with the dock. Taking this concept further leads to the angled approach, which would almost certainly be preferable here, if the space for it is available. Being able to control the smaller boat is good (it won't hurt!), but the "feel" of the bigger boat, in close quarters, is very different, even though the general principles are the same. It's a big leap, and there are many boaters who trade up, and then go out boating much less often largely because docking is so difficult. The big problem is wind — it oftens sends a larger cruiser careening sideways across the water, where a smaller boat in the same conditions is more maneuverable, and has relatively more open water around it in which to correct for unanticipated course deviations! Also, the helmsman cannot reach the dock from the helm position of a large boat, so even when you do get the boat into position, getting it secured promptly (in heavy weather) requires at least a modicum of training and experience.
Step3
Wandering and Impossible turns- Constantly wandering off course is a common characteristic of planing hull boats. Most of them have no keel, or an insubstantial one, and in other ways too are not designed to "track" well at low speeds - doing so would compromise their planing-speed handling. Having twin, concentric propellers on coaxial shafts is said to help. But for the rest of us, there is no cure - only control. The most common error is over-controlling - reacting too strongly. This is related to timing - some of the boat's "yawing" will self-correct, if left alone, and some won't. The part that "won't" needs to be caught early, allowing gentler correction, and this requires practice and experience. Some boaters with trim tabs find better stability at low speeds if they lower them (i.e. the "bow down" position). Don't attempt a maneuver you can't do! If your boat won't make the turn, don't try it. Now, having said this, there are several ways to make a boat turn more tightly than you might think it can. On is to reduce speed or even make a little sternway before using a brief but decisive shot of power, in forward gear with the helm hard over, to yaw the boat.
Even easier and more elegant, and what worked for this boater, was the use of a spring line. He was able to come alongside the end of his finger dock, forgetting about turning at all, and then take a long line or two ashore and work the boat manually, slowly and gently, into its slip. There are several variations on this, some using muscle power and some the engine, and they're all in Boat Docking!
Step by Step instructions
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