Kayaking: How to Get Off - as part of the expert series by GeoBeats. One of the questions that people always ask me is: “How do I come up to a dock, whether it be horizontally, or even perpendicular?” Obviously, I cannot get out of my boat when I am coming perpendicular to the dock. So, what you have to do is you have to maneuver yourself so that you can get to the dock, itself. You can push on one side, you can pull on the other. You can push on one side, you can pull on the other, and what that is going to do is it is going to start to turn your boat around. Never reach out to the dock before you are up against the dock, because if you miss this dock by a sixteenth of an inch, you will be kissing the water, as we say. So, you are always going to want to either use your paddle to scull over, or even use your paddle to pull yourself over in order to come to the dock itself. Again, if you are going to depart, you always want to push yourself away nice and gently, and then you can pull yourself away as well, but when you are coming to the dock itself, you want to make sure that you are going to be able to come right up to it.