Color-coded coils take stress out of docking
Issue 70 : Jan/Feb 2010
When cruising, it helps to have aboard an assortment of docklines of various lengths so you can secure your boat in a variety of transient docks with lines that are well suited to the task at hand. Sure, you could simply carry six lines that were each 1 1/2 times the length of your boat, but that would mean you’d often be handling and coiling yards of unnecessary cordage, since all you need most of the time are 15-footers.
On our Ericson 38, Rag Doll, we traveled with four 15-foot, four 25-foot, two 40-foot, and two 60-foot lines, all stored in milk crates in the lazarette. This gave us the ability to use just the length of line we needed for any situation, but how could we tell them apart? Once all the coils were tossed together, all we could see was a mass of three-strand. When approaching the fuel dock, for example, we wanted to be able to find two 25-foot lines quickly — without having to sort through all of them.
My solution was to mark the tails of the lines with different colored electrical tape to indicate their length: green for 15-footers, yellow for 25-footers, red for 40-footers, and double red for 60-footers.
A little rummaging among the coils in the crate was all it took to find the color marking the right length of line. We always found docking the boat a bit stressful, so anything that made the preparation smoother was worth the effort.
Steve Christensen, a research chemist, sailed his Ericson 38, Rag Doll, for many years on Lake Huron and spent each August cruising the North Channel. He sold Rag Doll when he took a new job farther inland but looks forward to owning another good old boat to sail in retirement.
Thank you to Sailrite Enterprises, Inc., for providing free access to back issues of Good Old Boat through intellectual property rights. Sailrite.com
