Spring Lines diagram

[kmunik8]

This is all new to me but I'm told I need spring lines when I dock my boat. I have two poles, a deck to the port side of the boat and the main dock. I put a line from port stern to the main dock, starbooard side and vice versa. I just can not visualize what to do with the Spring Lines and no site I've found so far has a diagram that matches how my boat is docked, bow pointing outward. Can anyone help. As I said, I haven't the foggiest idea what's going on but I just had part of the vinyl name scraped on my port side and was told to "get my spring lines in order".

Thank you.

[David_Old_Jersey]

To be honest, I cannot quite picture your mooring

But anyway, hope this helps....



The red lines are the "Springs" (one boat uses a midships cleat, one does not)

Tying Boats to Docks Using Springlines

Using spring lines does really help stop the boat moving around - but, sorry, impossible for me to explain how they work!

[Hud3]

Spring lines will keep your boat from moving forward or backward, but won't keep it off the finger pier on your port side. You need to adjust your bow and stern lines to do that. Put two or three fenders on the port side of the boat to be safe.

Spring lines are simply two lines, one led forward typically from a midship cleat to a piling or dock cleat near the bow, and another led aft from the same midship cleat to a piling or dock cleat near the stern. The one led forward is the most important one in your setup, because it will keep your stern from bumping the main dock.

Since the bow and stern lines need to have enough slack to handle the rise and fall of the tides, they usually don't do a good job of controlling forward and aft motion. The spring lines are set at such a flat angle that they can be fairly tight, holding the boat in position, as long as your tidal range is 2-3 feet or so.