Home Forums Fishing Freshwater Jumping the gap

My regular boat mate is not an olymipic gymnast or a long jump type athletic lady. She is also very uncomfortable driving the boat at or around the dock or by any other boats or people. I think I'm okay with this. Rather then the alternative of her being wicked over confident and bending my hull or chopping up the occasional swimmer.

So she is typically in the roll of being on the bow when we come in to the dock and she steps off the boat and onto the dock to tie us off. She is paranoid beyond words that she is going to fall in one day when she missteps or has one foot on the dock and the other on the boat with the distance and bouncing from waves on the increase.

Her worries that the boat will drift away as she is making her step toward the dock makes this a point of low level stress and talking to her self under her breath every time we dock. I put diamond plate on the bow to let me remove the concern of a light bump now and then should I get too close or with a hair too much momentum. This lets me motor up slow and easy to the dock and keep powered on just enough to let her get across the gap. The side garb bars on the bow are nice, but in our case actually in the way of carful exits to the dock. There is limited footing on the bow with the grab bars there. If the front door is opened that's in the way too. So the Diamond Plate has been a good addition to get her so close the boat may actually touch the dock. So how are you getting your mature significant other to jump the gap and feel okay about it?

I think I need a metal clip of some sort with a stiff loop of rope connected that is on the end of my extendable push pole. Maybe this would help her reach out and put the line loop over the cleat on the dock and then pull us in. Dock lines are not stiff enough to stay in a loop like a lariat/ lasso does. Maybe that's my next invention. Lariat looped dock lines for the folks getting to, or past 50 years old and cannot leap across the gap anymore!

The other problem with this is the many unusable crap docks that have no cleats, giant medieval spikes of horror sticking out the sides and rotting boards to land on after the jump. I've offered countless times to be the jumper, but she will not drive the boat.

Oh well, open to suggestions folks, gotta help my adorable first mate out here with some new ideas.