THE ANSWERS YOU MEANT TO LOOK UPBEFORE YOU LEFT THE DOCK.

The bowline gives you a fixed loop that will not slip and will not jam, no matter how hard it gets loaded. It is the knot you use on a mooring ring, a jib sheet, a towline, or anywhere you need a loop you can still untie afterwards.

Decide how big the loop needs to be, then make a small overhand loop in the standing part of the line, well above that point, with the tail pointing up through it. That small loop is the rabbit hole and the standing part is the tree.

Bring the tail up through the small loop, around behind the standing part, and back down through the same small loop the way it came up. Rabbit out of the hole, round the tree, back down the hole.

Snug the standing part while holding the tail and the loop, and leave a tail about six inches long. If the tail finishes on the inside of the big loop it is right; if it finishes on the outside you have tied a cowboy bowline, which holds but is weaker — retie it.

Under heavy shock loading, add a half hitch or a stopper knot in the tail. Practice it one-handed and behind your back, because the day you need it will be dark, wet, and rushed.

A cleat hitch is the only correct way to secure a dock line to a cleat. Wraps piled on randomly will slip or jam solid under load, and a jammed line in a crosswind is how boats get damaged.

Take the line to the far horn of the cleat first, so the load comes onto the base of the cleat rather than lifting it. One full turn around the base.

Cross over the top of the cleat in a figure eight to the other horn, then back across again. Two figure eights are plenty for a dock line.

Finish with one — only one — locking hitch: form an underhand loop so the tail lies flat against the horn and pulls parallel with the standing part. Pull it snug.

Never use more than one locking hitch, never coil the whole line onto the cleat, and never leave a loose tail on the dock to trip on. You should be able to cast the whole thing off in two seconds with one hand while the engine is running.

Squelch sets the noise floor — the point below which the radio stays silent. It does not change how far you can transmit or how sensitive the receiver is. It only decides how weak a signal has to be before the radio stops bothering you with it.

To set it: turn squelch fully down until you hear steady static hiss, then bring it up slowly until the hiss just stops. That is the sweet spot. You will hear the faintest usable traffic and nothing else.

Set it too high and you will silence weak calls — including a distress call from a small handheld a few miles away. That is the mistake that matters. Too low and you sit in a cabin full of static all day and start turning the volume down, which is just as bad.

Reset squelch when conditions change. Engine noise, a new alternator, a marina full of chargers, or a passing squall all move the noise floor.

Keep channel 16 monitored at that setting whenever you are underway, and remember squelch has nothing to do with the volume knob — check both before you decide your radio is dead.

Fenders belong on the boat, not the dock, and they go out before you are in the slip — not while you are drifting sideways toward the finger.

Count: three per side for most boats up to the mid thirties, four if you are alongside a piling dock or rafting up. Two is what people use right before they buy new gel coat.

Height: the fat middle of the fender sits at the widest part of the hull, level with the rub rail or dock edge, whichever will make contact. A fender riding above the rub rail is decoration.

Hang them from a solid rail, cleat or stanchion base with a clove hitch backed by a half hitch so you can adjust the height in one motion. Never hang them from lifelines you would rather keep straight.

Placement: one at the widest beam, one forward, one aft where the hull curves in. On a piling dock use a fender board across two fenders so the piling cannot slip between them.

Bring them in once you are underway. Fenders trailing at sea look sloppy, add drag, and are the fastest way to be identified as the boat that does not know what it is doing.

That is the whole point. Load your engine manual, radio manual, chartplotter guide, fridge and microwave paperwork, wiring schematics, even the fishing reel diagram, and Salty reads all of it.

Then you ask in plain English — what oil does my outdrive take, which fuse is the fridge on, how do I reset the chartplotter — and you get an answer with the page it came from, instead of thumbing through a wet binder at the dock.

He also reads your maintenance history, fuel logs, float plans, captain documents and club policies, so the answer accounts for what your boat has actually had done to it.