How to Safely Leave a Marina in a Sailboat

Video Transcript

"Okay, so now we are ready to leave the dock, and so what you need to do is give your crew the plan. So our plan today, since the wind is coming from our starboard side, and we are going to be blown to the port side, is we are going to leave all the dock lines on and the starboard side attached and the ones that are on the port side are slack, so they are not doing anything so we get rid of those. So you explain that to your crew and tell them you are going to back out, which way we are going to turn, so that everyone knows what is going to be expected of them. So right now we can get rid of the bow line, so Ed, cast off the port bow line, and Steve, cast off the stern line. And then your crew goes to the aft lines, and before you have them let go of those, you get ready to put the boat into reverse, we get it in gear, cast off the bow, and now you want to focus in keeping the boat's bow in the center of the slip, enough momentum so that you have some good steerage, head out straight back. Once you see that you have the slip cleared, you can start your turn. Big boats have a lot of momentum so you don't need a lot of speed, right now I'm in neutral and we're just gliding, using momentum to move us along. Check forward, check back, we are in a good position now, we'll let the bow come around a little bit more, I'll put in a little forward power, a little forward gear, straighten us back out, turn the wheel and down the fairway. You also want to make sure as you're going down the fairway that you look to see if there is any other sailboats coming out. You're looking to see people at the stern of their boats, working on them, a lot of times you can see the motors running, you want to leave the fairway fairly slow in case something happens. A boat pulls out in front of you or somebody falls in the water, you want to be able to be going slow enough that you could stop your boat. Now we are heading straight down the center of the fairway, heading out to go sailing. YeeYee, oh yeah and then the other one, ready for the fender part? Okay. So are we going to remove or, are we just flipping up? We'll flip them up, so are you ready? Yeah. Okay, now that the boat is underway we take the fenders up, so Ed and Steve will be bringing them up. And explain what the fenders do for me a little bit. The fenders protect the boat from the side of the dock and when the boat is sitting in the slip it will bounce back and forth and you want to protect the hull from crashing into the wood. We are going to put the fenders away. Now one of the things you want to do as the Capitan on your boat, is protect your crew. The rule that you should give your crew is walk on the boat, keep their body low and always have one hand on the boat for balance. The rule is one hand for you, one hand for the boat. The other thing you want to watch and remind your crew about is to stay underneath the height of the boom. The boom is one of the major accident areas on a boat. It swings back and forth and will hit people on the head, so always make sure that your crew is staying and keeping their head below the height of the boom. So now we are removing, we're taking the fenders off and we are going to stow them for the trip. And then we'll go sailing. And Ed, where do you usually stow the fenders? Sometimes you have a nice big, deep, lazarett to store them in, and on this boat we have a big deep lazarett; other locations, you could tie them to the stern pulpit it there is room and let them dangle over the back, but here we'll just go ahead and stick them in this big lazarett."