Another blow a comin'

[HoffaLives]

Another force 9 heading this way. Just wondering - when people tie up for strong winds, do they secure the boat firmly against the fenders and dock or do they leave it slack so the boat can bounce around a bit. I don't want fenders rubbing against the hull, but it seems to me there would be greater shock loads and chafe on the mooring lines if she was allowed to bob around.

[xort]

I hate bouncing against fenders. If the slip is wide enough and there are pilings on both sides, I tie up clear of the dock. Fenders can do quite a bit of cosmetic damage to hull sides.

[teshannon]

Likewise here. Don't like the boat bouncing off fenders/dock.

[TrueBlue]

Given the luxury of choice, it's best to tie up on the lee side of the dock with fairly taunt docklines, avoiding excessive fender abrasion. Otherwise, I concur with xort & te's comments.

[mallo]

Hi HoffaLives
It depends how you are moored and how you mooring are done and the set-up of your fenders are.
We have a 48ft steel (heavy) sailing boat, we used to tighten up the mooring as tight as possible to stop her heaving around in the wind and associated swell however latterly we have changed things a bit, we have our fenders mounted on the pontoon arm/dock.
As we aren’t a live aboard so it isn’t an issue to get on and off, we leave the ropes a bit slack and when it blows hard put extra ropes out pulling us off the fenders as they wear away the finish.
We try and pull her off as much as is possible most of the time (without being a pest to our neighbour) this has saved the paintwork no end.
I am not convinced fixed fenders are the best thing I think if they are properly attached to the boat and that they cant roll out (as the boat rolls in the wind) they probably do less damage to the paintwork.
The other trick is to use heavy mooring ropes, ours are many sizes bigger than we need (but it’s good for piece of mind).
Before we kept the boat in this marina she was on a drying area with four sets of ground chains and one gale she snapped the two aft ½" ground chains with the surging backwards and forwards, the boat ended up across the sterns of 6 other boats, higher up the harbour, it was only a small tide and she should of only floated for ½ and hour in the row she should have been in, and never floated in the next row, she was afloat for 5 hours, when the gale went through the tide dropped and she was dry in no time just like someone pulled the plug out!
I agree with xort, tesannon, TrueBlue.

[camaraderie]

If you have a four point (corner) tie up then you can center the boat in the slip and keep the fenders off the boat. All too often though, slips are along-side tieups where your fenders are your only protection when the wind puts the boat hard on the dock. In that case, for a fixed dock, I think a little bit of slack is helpful to kepp the fenders in position and allowing some movement with less friction on the hull of the boat. On a floating dock, I tend to rig much tighter and let the boat mimic the motion of the dock so I don't have added friction and movement when the two go in opposite directions. In heavy conditions though, dock rash is hard to avoid in an along-side tie.

[sailortjk1]

We keep her tied up in the center of the slip away from and off the dock.
If anything, I try to be closer to the center pillings as they are more forgiving.

[sailingdog]

It really depends on the setup of your slip as well as the direction of the wind. If you have floating docks, then tieing the boat to the dock fairly tightly with fenders and such might not be a bad idea... if you have fixed docks, you need to leave slack so the boat can move with the storm surge.

If your slip has solid pilings on the side opposite the pier, then tieing the docklines to keep the boat centered in the slip is probably your best bet. The pilings in some marinas aren't solid enough to trust tieing the boat to. For instance, in some marinas the pilings are just large PVC pipe sunk into the mud and have a disturbing tendency to move.

[Faster]

If you are moored in a finger arrangement with another vessel beside you in your bay, talk to them and perhaps you can both win by tying the boats together, keep both off the dock and fenders. If the bay is wide enough, you can balance both boats free of fenders on all sides.

In our last marina we did this as a matter of course, after we repainted a boat and didn't want any fender rub.

[HoffaLives]

We are moored in a shared finger slip next to a steel contraption that might have been a sailboat at one time. I'm quite sure he could care less about his paint. We are fortunate that we are in a very sheltered harbour but a force 9 still makes things pretty bumpy. Our docks are floating and the wind inevitably blows us away from the dock, or a bit fore-and-aft. So just slacken the lines and let the rodeo begin?

BTW, the force 9 forecast last night fizzled.