Fenders First, Questions Later: A Sensible Guide to Rafting Up Overnight

Half seven, the light going soft over the water, every buoy in the bay wearing a boat, and one solitary mooring still swinging free with a hopeful look about it. You nose in, get a line on, breathe out - and then a Bavaria appears off your quarter with a bloke on the bow holding a warp and a cheerful expression. What happens in the next four minutes decides how the rest of your evening goes.

Rafting up is one of the quiet joys of British cruising. It is also where perfectly reasonable people discover they have strong opinions about fender heights. The good news is that the ropework is the easy bit. The hard bit is judgement - about tide, wind, and the people whose deck you are about to walk across in damp socks.

Read the water before you read the faces

Before anyone starts shouting about fenders, look around. Which way is the wind going to be at three in the morning? Is this a spring tide that will have you swinging wide by dawn, or a neap where nobody moves much? How much water is under that buoy at low water, and does the harbour authority here even permit rafting?

Places differ, and they differ sharply. Some harbours publish exactly which buoys will take a second boat and which are single-occupancy; others leave it to the discretion of the harbourmaster on the day. A quick word on the VHF, or a look at the notice board at the slipway, saves a conversation you would rather not have at dusk. If a mooring looks lonely because it is shallow, small or otherwise unsuited to a second hull, there is usually a reason.

Also worth a glance: how the boats already rafted are lying. Two boats of similar length and draft swinging in company tells you the mooring is comfortable. A 40-footer tied to a 22-footer with a sagging line tells you something else entirely.

Fenders: more than looks decent

Hang fenders at the height of your own rubbing strake and at the widest part of the hull, then hang another two where you think you do not need them. Rely on your fenders, not the other boat's - nobody wants to be the crew who arrived empty-handed and used the neighbour's kit as a buffer.

Tie them on properly. A fender dangling from a guardrail by its lanyard, swinging in the swell, is decoration rather than protection. And if the forecast has any roll in it, a fender board or a couple of big sausage fenders laid horizontally will earn their locker space.

Lines that actually do something

Bow and stern lines hold you alongside. Springs stop you surging backwards and forwards against your neighbour every time a wash comes through, and they are the lines people forget. Two springs, set up properly, turn a restless night into a quiet one.

Run your warps back to your own boat. Do not make fast to someone else's stanchions, guardwires or - worse - their lifeline gates. A cleat, a mast, or a mooring bollard after asking is fine; anything thin and stainless is not. Where a line passes through a fairlead or over a toe rail, consider chafe, add a turn or a bit of hose, and check it in the morning before you congratulate yourself.

When lines are passed across, pass them

loose and let the other crew make them off. Do not arrive with a knot already in the end that only you can undo.

The boat already there makes the rules

If you are joining a boat already on the buoy, you lie on the side you are given, at the distance you are given, and you do the adjusting. The host is not being difficult; they have been there since four o'clock and they know which way the swell comes in.

There is an unspoken hierarchy of sizes too. A heavy displacement boat tied alongside a light fin-keeler will roll it around all night. If you are the bigger boat, say so before the lines go across, and be prepared to be the one that moves.

Crossing the neighbour's deck

Ask before you step aboard. Every time, even if you asked yesterday, even if you are only going to the bow. Shoes off is the default on most British boats and nobody will think less of you for checking.

Use the gate, not the guardrails. Do not walk through a cockpit where someone is eating, and do not move a neighbour's gear to make your own life easier - a folded sail on the side deck is a decision somebody made. If you are coming back late, work out now which route keeps you off their foredeck at midnight.

Noise, smoke and galley diplomacy

Rafting is a shared address, and the walls are thin. Generators off by nine is a decent rule of thumb, and a reasonable one if there are other boats within earshot. Music carries across water in a way that surprises people. Frying onions at eleven at night is a smell that carries even further.

Dogs and children are welcome on most rafts and a nuisance on some; the difference is nearly always how closely they are watched. If you smoke, do it upwind and away from open hatches. If in doubt about any of it, ask - "is the music bothering you?" costs nothing and buys a great deal.

How to say no without an atmosphere

Sometimes the answer is no. The wind is forecast to veer, there is a big swell running, the buoy is only rated for one, or the crew mix simply is not going to work at close quarters. You are allowed to decline.

Keep it short and give a reason that is about conditions, not character: "Sorry - we're expecting it to swing tonight and I'd rather not risk the gelcoat." Or: "I think the harbourmaster keeps this one single - worth asking on 11." Offer an alternative if you can. Then get back to your supper, because a polite no delivered early is worth ten hours of silent resentment.

Leaving without leaving a mess

In the morning, untie in reverse: springs off last, and only once the outer boat is ready. Do not cast off a neighbour's lines to make your own departure tidier. Do not motor off through the middle of a rafted pair and send them crashing together.

And when you go, take everything with you - warps, fenders, the bit of rope you were meaning to tidy - and say thank you. The raft will re-form with someone else by teatime, and it works because everyone plays it the same way. That is the whole trick: not perfect seamanship, just a bit of attention paid to the tide, the wind and the people alongside you.