"Gene Kearns" wrote in message

Given a 10 knot wind away from the dock and a 10 knot current heading
toward the dock, I'm going with the current. The heck with the
wind....

I see your point wrt to the aircraft analogy. In an airplane, the wind is
generally your only "current." In a boat, your "ground speed" is a function
of wind and current, but you still almost always dock bow into the current,
just as you land a plane into the wind.

Before I dock at some place that I'm not familiar with, I point upstream and
idle and see what the current is going to do. To my recollection the wind
has never pushed me forward into a significant current, but I like to sit 10
or 20 feet off the dock and figure out which way I'm going to be drifting
and how much power I'm going to require to remain stationary and all of that
before I try docking.

It may take 1500 rpm to remain abeam a pylon or docked boat or some other
fixed location and if I know that beforehand, I know what to expect when I'm
slipping in between two docked boats. ('Cause you can't assume much based on
how somebody else is docked.) It's not as elegant as the guy who drives
right up to the dock and parks, but I've never bumped into anybody else's
boat, either.

-c