Ah, these small boats are so easy!
Every time I was aboard a destroyer (usually conning or on the bridge in direct support) into Hong Kong, we had to perform the agonizingly complex standard Navy mooring to the man-of-war buoy dance. Entering harbor, prep an anchor chain by detaching it from the anchor and horsing it up to the bullnose. 500 yards or so from man-of-war buoy; launch the whaleboat with standard 3-man crew and two buoy jumpers with appropriate tools. Head the ship into the current and stop with the bullnose a close to the buoy as possible, and pass a mooring line messenger to the whaleboat which then transfers the buoy jumpers and the line to the buoy while remaining carefully clear of the area between ship and buoy. The messenger is rove through the buoy shackle, and the end returned to the ship where a lot of manpower is available to help pull the 6-inch mooring line down to the buoy crew who hopefully very quickly shackle it to the buoy. And we are moored, right? Wrong. Next the ship is winched up tight to the buoy (jumpers having retreated to the whaleboat) and the anchor chain is lowered to the buoy. Then the whaleboat returns the buoy jumpers to the buoy where they shackle the chain to the buoy shackle. Now we are moored. There are any number of ways this evolution can go very wrong very fast, and until that mooring line is first made fast to the buoy, the conning has to be of a high degree of precision. Unmooring is the reverse. The last time I was there in command of a towing and salvage ship, we were invited because of our size toe moor alongside HMS Tamar, the Royal Navy base. What a pleasure to not have to wait forever at either end for the water taxi!