Making Fast

The Art of Making Fast

Entropy is an inescapable principle of physics: All systems move from states of organization toward states of chaos. The sea often seems like the demon of entropy, jostling, tugging, tossing, rusting, bleaching, and shifting at every moment to attack our boats—our hopeful little bits of order.

Yet we wouldn’t get anywhere unless we were damned clever at kicking back entropy temporarily. We know we will lose to entropy in the long voyage, but our ways of dissuading it for a bit, of making fast to keep our boats securely tied to their docks or moorings, is a basic sailor’s skill. The old sailor’s (temporary) victory cry over entropy is “All a’tanto!” All lines taut and secure!

Jan Adkins

With a few turns around a bollard, a young boy can resist the force of a gang of men pulling on a line.

There’s an ancient saying in the British Royal Navy, and it provides a reliable basic premise: “A round turn saved Her Majesty’s ship.” With one hand, a 10-year-old child can arrest the pulling might of 10 men and a burro if the intelligent moppet takes a few turns around a tree—or a cleat, or a bollard. The logical youngster allows the friction of round turns to diminish forces out of proportion to his strength. When you make fast, remember what saved Her Majesty’s ship; go thou and do likewise.

Jan Adkins

Chafe gear can range from elegant stitched-on leather to lengths of canvas or old garden hose. Surge protection, too, ranges from store-bought snubbers to an old tire. Determine your needs, and choose accordingly.

Fenders, Chafing Gear, and Surge Protection

Among the most annoying characteristics of the sea is that it just won’t be still. You thus must protect your hull against the ravages of dock-bite with good fenders. You must also mitigate the shock on lines and hardware with chafing gear and surge protection—so-called “line snubbers.”

Fenders

Choosing fenders shouldn’t be a temptation to economy: You need at least three comfortably hefty cushions between you and the rough wood or concrete of the dock. Determine over time, trial, and error, what the vulnerable tangents of your hull are, and place your fenders accordingly. In addition, you might consider one large, round, “roving” fender to be used in close-quarters maneuvering—a what-if fender to drop between you and another boat, a dock, or a piling.

The condition of your fenders and their pennants, and the way you handle them, is a mark of your seamanship. Setting off with your fenders cavorting in your lee wake is unsightly and slovenly. Un-whipped and casually hitched pennants reveal a lazy, heedless side of your command. Tie off fenders close to the water’s surface but not touching it—unless the structure of the dock demands a higher position. Don’t tie fenders to lifelines; if they’re caught between hull and dock, a wave-shift can snap the lifelines. Tie them to stanchions or hard-points, and use consistent hitches to do so, as you will not always be the one untying them, and it will not always be in daylight.

Chafe and Surge Protection

Anywhere your dockline crosses an edge or passes through a fairlead or makes a sharp turn, it needs chafing gear to protect it from the friction of the boat’s constant shifting. In any kind of seaway, a dockline may need surge dampers to ease the jerk of the water against your hardware and the dock’s holdfasts. Chafing and surge gear can be simple, improvised, or high-tech, but it shouldn’t be an afterthought. Afterthoughts have a way of becoming after-calamity regrets.

Holdfasts: Shipside

Numerous pieces of hardware—holdfasts—are at your service for securing the end of a line. Here are some of the basic holdfasts you’ll encounter aboard ship.

Belaying Pins

The belaying pin is an ancient device, a movable wooden or metal peg thrust vertically through a robust horizontal pinrail. A working line, usually from above, passes first under the lower half of the belaying pin, and is then secured by several figure-eight turns. Like most holdfasts, the belaying pin is a friction tool.

Timbers as Belaying Points

Knightheads (1), bitts (2), samson posts (3), and Jonesport cleats (4) are hefty timbers that take working strain on the body of the well-anchored vertical wood members and are then cleated and sometimes belayed with figure-eights about a horizontal metal or wood timber or pin.

Cleats

The cleat is a horizontal version of the belaying pin. The working line passes under both ears of the cleat before several figure-eight turns are laid on. Marine pundits insist that after the initial pass under both ears, one figure-eight and a tucked half-hitch will hold nearly anything. This may be true, but remember: Holding is only half the job. Releasing tension gradually is the other half. Take more than one figure-eight. The cam and jam cleats seen above are generally used for sheets and other sail controls—and not for mooring lines.

Cleating versus Belaying

Two nautical verbs have separate meanings: To cleat has the sense of securing a line with turns; to belay means to secure the turns by a secure hitch. The verbs are distinct because it’s sometimes inadvisable to “lock down” a secured line. Halyards are usually belayed, but sheets—which may require sudden release or frequent changes—are almost never belayed. Cleating and belaying are indispensable skills made simpler by nautical hardware, some ancient and some that continues to evolve with new materials and needs.

Holdfasts: Dockside

As you travel about in your boat, you’ll encounter a varied menu of holdfasts for securing lines to docks. The following are the basic ones, and how to use them. As shown on the following page, you have the option of adjusting docklines from your vessel or from the dock. If you’re snugging the boat down at a slip, adjusting tensions and the boat’s position might be easier from the dock. If you want to handle it from the deck, do so by laying your docklines’ eyesplices around—or through and around—the dock cleats. When you’re short-handed or wanting a quick getaway, you may wish to double-up the lines: eyesplice on your vessel’s deck cleat, once around the dock cleat, and then adjusted and belayed on deck.

Caution: This deck-release arrangement works very well if you and your crew get the docklines in double-quick, keeping them out of the propeller!

Bollards

Bollards are basic posts, large or small. Classical bollards were made from outdated cannon set into the cobbles of the quay. These simple hard-points require intelligent line arts. Always start with the Queen’s round-turn, or two, or more. The round turns should take the strain. The task of belaying is not resisting tension but merely locking the friction-turns in place.

Pilings

Pilings are ubiquitous sentinels along the waterfront, and can be faithful holdfasts. Beware of splinters, tar, and occasional hardware or nails that might chafe your lines. Give the piling a shove. If it sways, consider how much it might sway with a wake or a bump and what this additional tension might impose on your vessel’s hardware.

Hitching Rails

Hitching rails are found in front of the Longbranch Saloon, but also along dinghy floats and even larger docks. Their linear form encourages linework that resists lengthwise pull to keep your boat in one place. Is the hitching rail bolted or nailed? Is it faithfully sturdy? Caveat constringor! (“Let the binder beware!”)

Rings

Rings are ancient devices, ironmongery set into stone quays or bolted into wooden docks. They invite their own set of linework, special ring-hitches.

Securing Your Boat

Making Fast to a Floating Dock

Dinghies strung by their painters and hobnobbing with one another at the floating dock during a skipper’s meeting may be a necessary evil. But making a larger vessel fast requires more thought. Your boat’s particular shape and the interplay of tensions are a geometric study. A bow and a stern line provide the basic security of keeping your boat alongside. Spring lines triangulate the tension system, keeping the boat from sliding forward or aft along the dock.

Jan Adkins

The situation will dictate the arrangement of spring lines (shown in blue). Alongside a dock, they can be led from a single point amidships to dock cleats forward and aft; in a slip, a spring line may be located on the boat’s inaccessable side, if the situation calls for this.

Your docklines should not be old sheets beyond their service life. They carry a constant shifting load and must be strong, well-cared-for parts of your inventory: hefty nylon lines that stretch. A dockline without “give” transmits waves and wind-shifts in sharp, damaging jolts that will tear away hardware over time.

Jan Adkins

Docklines may be made fast to the dock and controlled from the boat (blue line) or made fast to the boat and controlled from the dock (green line). Again, the situation will dictate the best choice.

Keep in mind: Making fast is only half the job. Releasing tension in a controlled, gradual manner is the other half. Figure-eights and other friction turns allow you to control the release. If your boat is likely to shift with tide or wind, take an extra set of turns.

Mousing a Mooring Line

Picking up the mooring float is always a tense moment. Done right, it’s a dance; fumbled, it’s an embarrassment. But when the big mooring line eyesplice is laid around the bow cleat or bitts, there’s still a task remaining. Use the pennant between that eyesplice and its float to mouse the mooring line by taking figure-eight turns around the cleat or bitt and then belaying it. This locks the eyesplice in place and keeps the pickup buoy from rolling about the deck. Use a dedicated line for mousing if the pickup buoy line is not up to the task.

Making Fast to Pilings

Lying against pilings is not ideal and it’s not convenient, but it’s the hand that chance deals you now and then. A comfortable item to have in this case is a bearing-board: a length of 2×6 or 2×8 with a pennant attached at each end. Fenders hang against the hull and the bearing-board spans them on one side and rubs fore-and-aft along the pilings on the other. A spring line should keep the position of your boat generally stable, but this is a critical situation to monitor: rising and falling tide can’t be allowed to “hang up” any lines on the pilings and place the weight of the entire boat on them.

There will come a time when your boat must share a piling with a previously docked vessel. There’s a bit of nautical etiquette involved in this. If you simply throw the loop in the end of your line over the piling above the previous boat’s line, that boat can’t undock unless it unties your line. If, however, you bring your loop up through the previous boat’s loop and pass it over the top of the piling (see drawing, page 5), the first docked boat can remove its loop over the top of the piling without casting you off for even a moment.

The Flat Flemish Flake

A single line trod-upon crossways is a remarkably efficient banana peel. It rolls, making a smooth bearing that can dump you or your dockmates on wood or water. Doing up the free ends of your docklines in a flat Flemish flake is a kind of dock etiquette. Sure, they look fussy, a bit precious, and way-cool, but they’re also practical. You can step on them without breaking your bottom.