Anchoring & Docking a large Catamaran - Power or Sail

When I took delivery of my Catana 431 catamaran in Canet, France, I was very concerned that I would carom it off the other boats and docks as I tried to get the catamaran into the Mediterranean Sea. Canet is very windy, and I had seen other skippers getting pinned to the dock by a breeze coming over the side of the boat - I was seriously motivated to learn close-in maneuvering to avoid collisions and close calls for my crew, boat and other people and boats.

Catana provided a week of instruction with one of their captains as part of the manufacturing and delivery process. These captains are working daily with new and pre-owned boats - moving, docking, undocking and anchoring large, expensive multihulls. I spent the week with my captain, leaving the dock when side-too, bow in and stern in, in cross-breezes and bow/stern breezes.

We initially started with the boat side-tied on starboard to the dock with a 20 knot side-wind. The fenders were crushed against the dock. For our awareness, we loosened the dock lines and attempted to push the catamaran off the dock. Impossible! With the entire crew on the dock pushing we could not budge the boat.

We rigged a spring line running from the bow cleat down to the midship cleat on the dock and forward to the crew standing by the bow cleat. I motored forward slowly with the port engine and the stern pivoted away from the dock. We had rigged 3 fenders all the way up to the bow to avoid scraping any part of the hull.

As the stern swung out far enough to have a safe undocking relative to the multihull behind me, my crew flipped our spring line off the dock cleat and quickly brought the line aboard. Perfect!

After redocking, we moved the extra bow fenders to the stern, and backed down on the newly rigged spring line going forward to the midship dock cleat, again using the port engine, which is furthest from the dock. This pivoted the bows out from the dock so I could motor forward after releasing and bringing aboard the aft spring line.

Note that I had the factory add an additional cleat on each stern, adjacent to the swim step. Crew could stand securely with the cleat immediately adjacent and with a convenient handle to grip so they would not lose their balance.

In addition to test sails to evaluate rig tune, sail shape, car settings and trim, we did an overnight sail down the coast of France to check out the electronics, navigation and anchoring the boat.

My crew and I spent the remainder of the week with our captain, leaving the dock, rotating the boat in successively narrower fairways barely wider than the boat, pivoting, backing, crabbing to windward. I had the crew practice the techniques also, as we were heading through the Med and across the Atlantic, stopping at a variety of locations on the way. I wanted redundancy in skills across everyone on board.

In Canet and much of Europe, the docking system is Med Moor, with either a single or double set of floating anchored buoys taking bow lines from each hull, with the boat backed into the dock and secured by stern and spring lines. Depending on how many boats were in the marina - new boats awaiting delivery, owner boats back for repair of upgrade, or used boats for sale - the docks can be more or less crowded. There are no "finger-piers" separating the docks into slips. Each dock is a linear dock hundreds of feet long, with floating buoys anchored to the bottom approximately 60 feet/20 meters out from the dock.

When the docks are full, the space you are backing into is actually narrower than the beam of your boat. Your crew stands on the swim step and pushes the other boats out of the way so you can back in. It is similar to loading horses into a starting gate. Except you are backing in and the bows are already tethered to the buoy.

Fortunately my first docking experiences involved having a ton of people onboard the boat - crew learning how to hand the lines to the mooring buoy and at the sterns, and the captain and other folks from Catana to lend a hand. They did not want me dinging my boat or any of the other boats in the marina!

Initially, we would straddle the mooring buoy between the two bows, and then rotate the leeward bow up towards the mooring buoy so the crew could reach down, pass both lines through the buoy ring and then take the lines back to their respective bow cleat. The starboard bow line would be dead-ended at the starboard bow cleat, run down to the buoy, go through the buoy ring and back to the starboard bow cleat. Same with the port bow line. The Catana had multiple bow cleats on both bows so the line would not lead back to the same cleat - avoiding chafe as the boat moves while moored.

Once both bows were secured with enough slack to get in the dock, we would rig a horizontal fender at the stern end of each hull so if I overshot I would not damage the sterns on the dock face. We made certain the large ports on each side of the hull were closed so we would not damage them or the adjacent boats while we backed in. Other boat owners have ripped the ports off their boat as they backed in and snagged on an adjacent boat.

We rigged fenders on both sides, even if one side did not currently have a boat docked there. Boats arrive and depart 24 hours a day and we always close all the ports to avoid damage.

With an engine in each hull, my captain informed me the best approach was to center the wheel, lean against it and use the two engine controls to pivot the boat, line it up and then back it in. Crew at the bows adjust the bow mooring lines to keep slack from going under the hulls or wrapping around the mooring ball. If they dropped a line in the water they would retrieve it immediately and then we would assess whether we could keep going or start over.

In windy or crowded conditions we wanted both bow lines on to keep from losing control of the boat. If it was light or not crowded we would dock with one bow line and then dinghy or swim out and rig the second bow line. In storm conditions - Canet routinely sees 40 knot winds - we would double the bow lines with different tension so if one chafed through the other on the same side would catch the boat and keep it from crashing into the adjacent boat. Most people did not follow that practice and we saw several boats damaged when their neighbor broke free and rotated into them.

We practiced double-handed Med Mooring - I would drive and one crew would go forward and rig the first bow line. Then I would rotate the boat so they could rig the second bow line and then we would complete the docking process.

My favorite boat hook - snag a mooring ring and it pulls the line back to you!

One item that proved very handy was a boat hook with an end fitting that could take the dock line, pass it through the mooring ring and bring it back to the boat. My dock lines were too thick to fit through the fitting, so I would attach a thin line to the end of the dock line, using a slippery reef knot to secure the thin line to the boat hook and then capture the mooring ball's ring. Worked perfectly. I eventually bought a second hook so each crew could have their lines rigged and ready, speeding up the anchoring process. I used these throughout the Med and Caribbean - excellent!

I eventually learned how to crab the boat to weather by reversing one engine, placing the other engine in forward, working the throttles to rotate the boat, and then reversing the engine controls so the other end of the boat would pivot up to bring the boat parallel again. For example, to work the boat to port, I would put the starboard engine in forward and give it a small amount of throttle. The starboard hull would start to move forward. If I then put the port engine in reverse, the rotation would accelerate. If I put the port engine in forward, the port stern would start to walk to port. With very little throttle on the starboard engine, the boat would start to rotate around its centerline and move to port. It was an amazing process and dramatically easier than maneuvering a monohull in similar situations. Having 2 engines 24 feet apart is a wonderful thing, and over the years I found I could parallel park the boat - particularly at fuel docks - in open spaces slightly longer than the hull.

I had a folding passarelle (gangplank) for the Catana, and I had it rigged so I could deploy it from the bow or stern. I thought during repairs or in certain marinas I might want to dock bow to instead of stern to. I actually never docked bow to, as the bows are very high and the passarelle would have been very steep. Off the stern, the passarelle was generally slightly sloped down to the dock so it was very easy to get on and off the boat.

In Gibraltar it was known there was a problem with rats getting aboard by walking on the passarelles and then damaging wiring and other parts of the boat. I added two lines of stretchy nylon with a short wooden spreader 10 feet off the ground, and attached a halyard to the system. When it was attached to the passarelle, there was enough elasticity to bring the "shore-end" off the dock so the rats could not get on board. When I stepped on the shore end of the passarelle the "rat rig" would stretch and the shore end would touch the dock. It worked perfectly and I never had any rats onboard!

Anchoring the Catana was an easy process. The anchor and chain ran from the electric windlass near the mast and passed through a roller under the bow net that was secured to the front cross beam. Once the anchor was set, I used a bridle with an anchor chain hook in the center that I attached to the anchor chain. I would let a little more scope out so there was slack in the chain, and the weight of the anchor was taken by the bridle to each bow cleat. If I wanted to rotate the boat slightly - for example when the waves were coming from a different angle than the wind - I would tighten one side of the bridle by passing a wrap around the cleat. The boat would rotate towards the shorter side of the bridle - yielding a quieter, calmer nights sleep.

My Catana had high topsides, a taller mast, furling jib and a main in a lazy bag - in other words, a ton of windage. So rather than the rolling you would see on a monohull in similar conditions, the Catana would move laterally, or load up the anchor line in gusts, move backwards and then spring forward when the wind eased. When we were swimming off the boat, we kept an eye on the sterns if it was windy to keep from getting clipped as the boat moved around. This was not a problem - just something to be aware of. Whenever we were getting in or out of the dinghy I would hold it tightly against the stern until everyone was onboard to make certain the dinghy and boat did not separate unexpectedly and send someone for an unintended swim.

The only time I had trouble was at Anse a Dos on Isle de Saintes, Guadeloupe. The anchorage is a narrow band close to shore. I put my bow close to the beach, dropped the anchor and backed down. The bottom quickly dropped away, so there was not much rode in contact with the bottom - there was a huge catenary coming back up to the bow of my boat. This made my boat particularly active - normally I can anchor in 20-30 feet of water and the boat feels like it is pinned to the bottom. With this deep anchorage, we were moving forward and backward and rotating as the wind shifted.

Everything was fine until about 3am. A monohull had come in late and snuggled right up near us after we had gone to bed. If we had been up we would have told them not to anchor so close.

Instead we woke up to a man screaming in French that we were about to hit his boat. I came on deck, assessed the situation, saw the person was crazy and decided to leave. Shouting at other boats in the anchorage never leads anywhere, and we wanted to get an early start on our trip north to St Martin. I started the engines, so I could keep away from the crazy man. We rigged, pulled the anchor and took off. The crazy man looked a little disappointed...