While using your sails for navigation on the sailing boat, you will experience an inclination of the angle while using the wind.

With catamarans, you will not be experiencing any inclination but again you might want to pay attention to the following chapters, especially if you are navigating in a rocky sea with larger waves.

In rough weather conditions, you want to make sure that all your hatches are properly closed, otherwise, you might be taking seawater into the boat. Even a small amount of water on your bed can be really annoying, as saltwater does not evaporate fast.

So, before you open your sails have a tour around the boat and double-check that all the hatches are completely closed and properly locked.

When you will be maneuvering you will also rebalance your inclination from one side to another. For such occasions, you want to secure moving objects inside the boat. This can be really annoying and expensive experience.

Broken glass is almost impossible to clean. On the other hand, your laptop or mobile phone can fall and possibly break.

So before opening your sails, take a look at the loose objects to secure them.

Another annoying noise is the sound of doors, closets, or drawers opening/closing at inclinations. Doors can be hooked while open or securely closed in a fixed position.

Each of them has a button you can press next to the opening side. It’s not enough to close them, you have to make sure to push this button if you want to lock them.

The winch handles are your best friends on the boat.

You will want to use them for opening and closing the sails, as well as opening and closing the water and fuel tanks. They can also help you for lifting your anchor if the main system fails to work.

Press a button on the winch handle in order to lose the fixing mechanism first. They are valued at around 200 euros each, so take extra care of them.

If you notice that a winch handle feels shaky in a winch, it can be that it’s not in the best shape. In those cases, is better if you take it out after every single use. The winch will always pull the rope towards you no matter in which direction you are spinning. The clockwise direction will pull the rope slower, resulting in easier spinning for you. An anti-clockwise direction will pull the rope faster and will demand more energy to spin.

Catamarans and bigger/newer sailing boats usually have an electronic winch.

Depending on the amount of wind you are taking, the ropes will be under tense pressure and it’s common sense to keep a safe distance from them. A stopper can break or a rope can sleep from its position.

But the most dangerous thing while sailing is the boom. The boom is the vertical metal piece on which the bottom of your mainsail is attached. Especially while sailing downwind, any maneuver that means changing the side of the wind on your sails will make the boom slide from one side to the other with great speed and energy.

Nobody wants to be nearby it when this happens, and getting hit by it will make you a man overboard, in the best possible scenario. No wonder it’s called the boom.

You have to take extra safety precautions while walking around a tilted boat. The inclination means that bigger waves are hitting the boat at random intensity, which will make your floor shaking and slippery on the deck.

It’s good practice to be ready for any random and unexpected tilting. Especially when walking outside from bow to the stern, always have one of your hands strongly attached to a part of the boat that is fixed and can support your weight. The outer fence around the boat is mostly designed for this purpose.

As good as your skipper can be, it’s physically impossible to be able to do everything by himself, that’s why the professional sailing teams count a lot of crew members.

Skipper’s main problem is that he can’t be at two places at the same time. At docking, he will need to do docking maneuvers so you will need to help him with the rest. Don’t be afraid to ask him to explain to you anything you need to know and understand properly.

At sailing, team play is very important

While sailing in Europe, you will encounter mooring lines in the 95% of the docks you will be berthing on.

Most probably the first mooring lines you will be dealing with will be in your home marina. Mooring lines are basically ropes connected from the dock to a concrete cube underwater.

Usually, you will be fixing 2 mooring lines at the bow of your boat, on the 2 frontal bollards. In smaller marinas, you might be given just one mooring line, usually on the windy side.

Make sure to ask your skipper to show you which knot should you be using the mooring.

Knot to the bollards, it’s not a difficult one but it’s important that you do it right. The main purpose is to fix the boat on the bow, not allowing it to move backward and hit the dock. The rope is about twice longer as the distance between the dock and the underwater concrete cube.

It needs to be longer because the sailor that will assist you while docking needs to be able to lift it up, and you need to be able to stretch it all the way to the bow. We will come back to the docking, let’s understand the undocking first.

Your skipper will need to be nearby the steering while undocking to make sure to take the correct course in order to avoid collisions with other boats around. He can manage the ropes that connect the stern to the dock, avoiding drifting forward while berthing.

As he can not be at 2 places at the same time you’ll need to help him while undocking.

When your skipper will give you the signal, you can unknot the first mooring line and throw it back into the water. Usually, it will be the one that’s on the off-wind side. After you throw the first one you will immediately be doing the same thing with the second. Be sure to throw the mooring line as far on the side as you can from the boat. It will need several seconds to sink and you don’t want it to be in the way of your propeller while leaving the marina.

For the docking procedure, you will need to be on the stern of your boat and have the hook stick in your hand.

When the boat comes close enough, the sailor will lift the mooring from the water, he can only lift it to a certain point, to catch it with your hook stick just when the boat comes about 1 meter close to the dock. Once you hook it with your stick, lift it up, grab the rope with your hand, get rid of the hook stick, and focus on the mooring line.

You need to walk from the stern to the bow, with the rope stretched on the side as far as you can, at least further off the side of the boat you are preparing to fix first.

It’s important that you remember that the mooring line is longer than the actual distance between the dock and the underwater concrete cube and that its purpose is to fix the boat on the bow preventing it to go back and not vice-versa.

Therefore, you need to keep stretching it towards the front as you walk forward. If you just walk forward with the mooring line in your hands without continuously stretching it forward, it will logically begin to be stretched on the back. That means you will be pushing your boat backward, and you want to obtain the contrary effect. You want to avoid the propeller.

Side docking is not that common, but you need to understand the dynamics of how it’s done.

There will be at least one time you will need to side dock during your sailing week, and that will be at the gas station before returning to your home marina. For the side docking, you basically need to use two lines of 20 meters, but instead of having them prepared both on the stern of your boat as for mooring docking, you will need to have one on the stern and one on the bow, both on the same side.

Usually, you want to understand on which side your boat drifts when you turn in reverse. You can easily test it in the open sea, just stop your boat into the wind and give it generous backward gas and you will notice that your boat is drifting towards one side.

You want to prepare the ropes on the opposite side of your drifting in order to help yourself generate an angle with the dock in the process of un-docking.

For catamarans, this logic doesn’t work, and with the 2 engines you can easily dock and undock on whichever side you prefer, just make sure you have your lines prepared, both on the same side as well.

In both cases, be sure to put at least 2/3 of the fenders you got on board on the same side you intend to dock, and check that they are positioned at an adequate height for the dock you are preparing to berth.

There will always be a person helping you onshore, you will need to throw him the frontal line, your skipper can handle the back one. When the sailor gives it back to you, you’ll just need to fix it at the frontal bollard the same way as a mooring line.

Pay attention, you don’t want the rope to touch any part of the fence, connect directly to the bollard. The fence is made to take the human weight, not the weight of an entire boat.

While throwing the anchor your skipper will need to be close by the steering wheel in order to make sure the boat is moving in the right direction with the right speed. Therefore, you will need to help him while throwing or lifting up the anchor.

To understand what is happening while anchoring, you must first understand that it’s not the actual anchor that fixes the boat in a place, but rather the weight of the chain that follows. It’s always recommendable to throw 4 times the length of the chain of the depth you are anchoring. If the weather is unstable and if you are anchoring for the night, is better to throw even 5 times more.

Usually, charter boats will not have more than 50 meters of chain available, which limits your anchoring to a depth of around 10 meters. Another important detail is that you want to avoid anchoring over a rocky sea bed because your anchor or the chain might get stuck in between rocks and you will have a nightmare trying to un-stuck it at the depth of 10 meters. Luckily most of the best-protected bays have sandy or muddy bottoms, therefore, are risk-free, but it’s always good to double-check this on your nautical maps.

All anchor winches on charter boats will be electrical and you will have a remote control next to the anchor and chain chamber, at the very front of your boat. On the remote control, you have clearly marked the button for lifting it up and down.

So, when your skipper gives you the signal, you can start pushing the button down. The chain should be marked with a color sign every 10 meters and your skipper will want to know how much of it is already in the water, so for every 10 meters lift one finger up because he will probably see you better than hear you in this situation.

The skipper will also tell you at which depth you will be anchoring and how much chain to throw consequently, so you will know when to stop.

On the way up the process is more or less the same, the only difference is that you don’t want to go all the way up in one straight motion.

The weight of the anchor winch going up is far heavier than on the way down, therefore you want to give it a second of rest every 5 seconds of lifting, to avoid overcharging it.

If your anchor winch stops working, you might want to check your frontal cabins, there should be a switch dedicated to the anchor winch that automatically shuts it down if you overcharge it, so switching it back on should do the trick.

You can also anchor manually using a winch that you can insert into the anchor winch.

The last detail to know about anchoring, watch out for the last few meters when recollecting your anchor. If you go too fast the anchor might start to swing strongly at the moment when it comes out of the sea, hitting and scratching your boat. Be more careful the last few meters.

Video – example

The final type of docking, you might be experiencing while sailing, is the buoy.

The buoy is basically a floating device that is connected at the bottom of the sea to a concrete cube. In other words, is like anchoring.

During a storm consider using 2 lines, one on each side of your bow, to be sure you can sleep merrily even with unstable weather conditions. If the weather is calm you don’t need to use more than one line.

Your skipper will again be steering during the process. You will have one rope prepared on one of the 2 sides, it’s not really important which one.

Your skipper will approach the buoy frontally with low speed and you will need to be on the bow with the hook stick, ready to hook the buoy, lift it up, and put the end of your line inside the top ring of the buoy.

Consider that your skipper will not be able to see the buoy the last 10 meters while approaching it, so you will need to be his eyes and correct his course slightly on the left or right if needed, and also tell him when you reach it so he can stop the boat.

Sometimes the buoys can be really heavy to lift, so consider doing it with a mate, one to lift the buoy and the other pass the rope inside the buoy ring.

Once you passed the line into the ring, you can release the buoy back into the water. You will then need to stretch your line in order to leave just some 4 meters in between your boat and the buoy, 2 meters on each side. You can then fix your rope on the very same bollard, but for better stability, it’s preferred to stretch it on the opposite bollard, your rope will take a V shape towards the boat.

Be sure you started your operation bypassing your line under the fence. If you haven’t you will need to repeat all the procedures. On larger catamarans, you will have a hard time lifting the buoy, so it will be easier jumping into the water with the end of the line, passing it through the buoys ring, and giving it back to another crew member on the other wing. Don’t worry, buoys are usually placed in clean and transparent waters.

1. Sun protection and dehydration prevention

If you will be sailing during summer days, so don’t forget that the sun is strong all day long, even when it’s clouded or windy. Sunlight reflects from the sea surface more than onshore, and a lot of those rays will end up hitting the boat and the crew on it.

There is a little shade you can find on the boat and being inside during the daytime it’s like being in a sauna (unless you have an air-con). You don’t want to get burnt during your first days and ruin your vacation.

Don’t forget to drink water as well. You should drink at least 1 liter of water per day, the more alcohol the more water you will need. You really don’t want to risk dehydration since you will throw away at least 2 days of your vacation trying to get better.

2. Kids on board

Your skipper has a lot of things to worry about, more than you know. If he looks like he doesn’t have work it means he’s a very good skipper. You should put extra care to protect your kids on board, do not rely on your skipper on that matter. Be sure they receive life vests for children before leaving the home marina.

Always look where they are going because they can squeeze between the upper and lower part of the fence. If they are not really good swimmers or the sea is rocky, keep the life vests on them permanently. Especially while using sails, as it takes extra time to go back.

3. Seasickness, allergies,…

If you aren’t sure if you suffer from seasickness, better take some pills for it with you on board. Pharmacies or hospitals might not be around the corner.

For allergies, especially if you might be allergic to wasps. The more natural the bay the bigger the possibility of having wasps on the boat in search of food. The mosquitos during the night could also be an issue in natural bays. So, don’t risk and take protective products with you.

4. Keys and locking the boat

In our experience, nobody steals from the boat. You are either anchored in the middle of the sea or you are berthing in some marina with surveillance cameras. Besides that, you will always have some friendly neighbors that will keep an eye out without being asked to.

But if you don’t feel comfortable leaving your boat open while going for a walk, you can close it with the keys provided by your charter company. In that case, it is better to define a dedicated spot on the outside of the boat to hide the keys. By doing so all the members of the crew are independent about leaving and returning to the boat, and you will avoid the possibility of losing them.

On a sailing boat, the dinghy will have to be manually dropped down every time you’ll need to use it. You will also need to mount the engine to the dingy each time unless you use paddles or tow it behind the boat.

The dingy engine will be mounted on the fence behind one of the steering wheels. It’s not heavy nor has a lot of power, but should serve you well for getting on land from your anchor point.

Take care when mounting the engine on the dinghy, even if it’s not really heavy it’s advisable to have a person on the boat passing it to a person on the dinghy, rather than walking from the boat into the dinghy with the engine in your hands.

When you will not be entering the marina or docking for a day or more, you will probably want to leave your dinghy in the water and drag it behind you while sailing. If you do so, it’s not advisable to leave the engine on it as it might fall off the dinghy into deep waters.

Put extra attention on the rope while going in reverse, in case the dinghy is in the water, to protect your propeller. Catamarans have heavier dinghies with a plastic bottom and stronger engine power. It would be impossible to lift them by hand, but luckily you can easily release them into the sea and take it back on the catamaran using a dedicated winch.

Depending on the size of your boat you will have one or more bathrooms available. Catamarans usually have a bathroom for every bedroom, which means 4 bathrooms minimum, depending on its size.

All you will need to do is pull out the tap from the sink and start showering (remove toilet paper in a dry position). Some bathrooms have a gravitational outlet that will drain the water you are using directly out of the boat into the sea but most likely you will have a water pump dedicated to doing this. So before taking your first shower you might want to locate the button that is activating this pump. Its position can vary from brand to brand, but it will always be in the same bathroom, usually around the sink.

Make sure you did activate the main water pump on the control panel of the boat, otherwise there will be no water coming from the tap.

Most of the bathrooms will have a manual pump system for the toilet. You will therefore have to pump your organic waste manually out of the toilet. The pump is always located next to the toilet and can be switched into dry and wet mode.

With the first pumping, you are just flushing out the waste, while switching to the wet mode you are also pumping in more water at the same time. Depending on your waste, you want to use one instead of another. More modern boats might have an electrical toilet, which means you will have two buttons to flush out your waste under the same logic then above, one dry and one wet mode.

A concern that all toilets have in common, and this is really important, is that the pipes flushing out the waste are pretty narrow. Therefore, nothing more than organic stuff should be thrown into the toilet, not even toilet paper, because it might clog the pipes, and then you have a big problem.

In this case, you will very probably have to abandon this bathroom plus it will have an unpleasant smell all week long. Even more, the charter company will charge you several hundreds of euros to solve the problem during the checkout process. Since you don’t want to experience any of that, be sure to throw your toilet paper and other non-organic waste in a plastic bag and store it under the bathroom sink.

Lastly, one will have a waste tank connected to the toilet. A waste tank is a deposit in which you can store your toilet waste. As mentioned above, all of the waste from toilets (and the kitchen sink) finally goes to the sea. Therefore, you might want to close the waste tank every time you are anchoring, as nobody wants to risk flushing the toilet while a crew member is swimming around the boat. You also want to close them when berthing in a marina or city docking, you can get a large fine for this mistake.

When you are sailing the open sea, don’t forget to open your waste tank in order to empty it. The valve is always located under the sink in the bathroom. It’s usually the biggest valve you can see, and as with any valve on the boat; turning it vertical to the pipes means you did close it while putting it horizontal to the pipes means it is open.

For the video presentation, visit the How-To module.

Usually, the charter operator will provide your boat with 2 small gas bottles for the week. If you plan to cook a lot on board be sure to double-check that both bottles are full.

The gas bottles are not stored in the kitchen but outside, usually under the small benches behind one of the steering wheels. The spare bottle will most probably be also stored in one of those storages on the deck.

Gas is one serious threat to fire on board, and you want to minimize that risk. That’s why every boat has a gas valve installed, that is usually situated under the stove. The vertical position with the pipes means that the gas valve is closed. It’s good practice to close the gas valve every time you are finished cooking.

The itinerary module (if open for you) includes 2 shopping lists and recipes – easy, delicious, and fast to prepare, suitable for chartering days, and a limited kitchen.

Every boat has at least one water tank. Usually, there are 2 water tanks, each one with a capacity of between 150 and 250 liters, depending on the size of the boat.

This amount will not be enough for your entire week and you will very probably need to refill it at some point.

You can check the water level of your tanks anytime on the control panel. The water tank plugs are located outside the boat somewhere around the edges, and you can open them with your winch. Some boats, especially catamarans, will have a water maker installed onboard, to convert seawater, to fulfill your water tanks.

Most of the tap water is drinkable, but the problem might be in the water tanks. You can never know how clean they are, therefore we don’t recommend drinking the water coming from the tanks. If you want to drink local tap water, better fill it in separate containers/bottles. In this case, double-check with some locals if the water is ok to drink.

There is also a valve to switch from one tank to another. It ‘is usually located behind the kitchen benches, under floors, etc – Check the App > Inventory for the exact location and the position.

You will know it’s time to switch it when your water pressure will become unstable.

Pay attention, when you totally run out of water, the water pump will continue to work even if all the taps are closed. In this case, you might hear a strange sound. You don’t want it to keep working because it could easily overheat after a while. In this case, turn the water pump off from the control panel till you have the possibility to refill your water tanks.

Sweet water on board is always a commodity and it should be consumed wisely. Try to make your showers shorter or use salt water to clean your dishes. These days a lot of boats have a secondary tap that pumps saltwater into the kitchen sink.

This is probably the detail that varies most from brand to brand, and sometimes can be incredibly difficult and frustrating to find them in rooms, saloons,s, and bathrooms. Make sure to localize them before spending the first night on board.

Note: the cabin lights need to be switched on first, on the control panel.

Each boat has at least 2 sets of batteries on board, one for the engine and home batteries for everything else. Boats that have bow thrusters will have a third set of battery, for that purpose.

So even if you can start your engines, that doesn’t mean that your home/service batteries are full of charge.

Some boats have solar panels installed that help you maintain the batteries level high even when you haven’t been using the engine, others don’t.

Some batteries are in better shape and will last even after one day of sailing (without motoring), others will need the engine to work more often. You can check the level of your batteries on the control panel, keep in mind that a battery that goes under 12V needs a charge, and if you let them go under 11.5V you will damage them greatly.

The best way to charge your batteries is to have them connected to an electrical circuit overnight. Almost any Marina will offer electricity, to connect the boat cable to the electrical circuit.

But you will spend few nights at an anchor remember to use the engine while keeping gas at the leer position. That’s the main use of leer position.

When you notice that your batteries are close to 12V, that’s when you want to start your engine, put it forward – in leer gas – at around 2000rpm for about 20/30 minutes and you will boost charge the batteries.

If you are noticing that the level of your home batteries is going down pretty fast, and you are spending a night anchoring, we advise that you shut down your fridge or air-con at the control panel.

The fridge and air-con consume most of the energy besides the anchor winch, and since the temperature is fresher during the night, and nobody will be opening the fridge while sleeping, the overall temperature in the fridge will not lose more than few Celsius.

About the electric circuit on the boat. All the 12V plugins inside the boat will work only when connected to an electric circuit onshore unless your boat has an inverter. Otherwise, just the USB ports will be working, independently if the engine is off or on. You will have one USB port next to the control panel for sure, and if the boat is more modern you will find one USB port in each room as well. Definitely, something to consider while preparing your luggage; power banks are a good idea on boats.

For swithes and locations please refer to your App > Inventory list.