Handling and seamanship

Mooring

Securing a boat to a fixed point, a buoy, piles or a dock, more permanently than anchoring.

To moor is to make fast: to a mooring buoy with its heavy ground tackle, to piles, or alongside a dock. A mooring field is an anchorage of maintained buoys, and picking one up beats anchoring in a crowded basin.

Approach a mooring like a docking: slow, into the wind or current, boathook ready, and a crew member briefed on which cleat the pendant goes to.

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Put the words to work

Vocabulary is easier at the helm.

The free South Carolina boater safety course teaches all of this in twelve chapters with a sixty question practice exam, and when you are ready for the water itself, one form gets you rental quotes from local operators.

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