Center Line Docking

The System

The Center Line Docking ® System was developed by an engineer and avid and long time sailor of 30 foot sailboat. When available crew was limited and the wind was blowing, untying the docking lines, without someone holding the bow in place permitted the bow and boat itself to move freely around the slip, hitting any and all sided of the slip well as the dock mounted lazarette. Similarly on returning after a sail, if there was not a crew to guide and bring the boat to a stop, there was the issue of running the bow into the front of the slip, and letting the wind move the boat in the slip until the bow could be positioned and tied down.

A Simple Effective Solution Having a three sided slip permits a single heavy duty woven line to be cleated at both ends and tensioned around a set of pulley sheaves to not only form a “V” that is a resting place for the bow; but by using the single tensioned line around the sheaves the benefit of the full length of the line’s elasticity can be taken advantage of, to slow the boat when entering the slip, should that be an issue. While the concept is basically very simple, the selection of components and interplay of the line material (double braided vs. 3 stranded, and polyester vs. nylon), elasticity and some vector analysis adds a bit of complexity to the systems, thus giving it a Patent Pending status.

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