You folks with the shock cord setup... you basically drop an anchor some distance away from shore or the dock... Then you proceed to shore or the dock, effectively stretching the shock cord, then you let the dink spring back toward the anchor, while you tie up a painter to some object (cleat) on shore or the dock. The dink is held off, but your line runs to the dink and allows retrieval of the dink later when you want to return to the mother ship.

As I understand this, you have some rode, and replace part of it with shock cord, or parallel the rode with shock cord. But you have painter going from the dink to some tie off point at your landing.

We are talking distances of oh 20 feet or so, right?

Is there a float involved?