Pontoon Boat & Deck Boat Forum

I know I have brought this topic up a few other times, and I'm not trying to , but it's time for me to act. I need a better mooring setup.

It's the first day of hurricane season, and there is already a low pressure system heading my way. It probably won't develop, but it reminds me of things to come. I was just wondering what you guys do to prep for the summer storm season. I ungraded from my old 3/8" mooring lines to 1/2" lines and added larger bumpers to my dock a couple weels ago.

A lift isn't going to happen this year. I don't have the money, or skills to build one. I want a floating dock eventually. I think I am going to try to build it myself. I need to pull the trigger on a better mooring setup. Currently my boat swings too much on the lines for me to feel comfortable during a windy strom. I already sustained some minor damage (dents) to my port side panels from a storm last year. I have since placed bumbers in the impact zones on the dock.

The way I see it is this - I have two different ways to solve my problem.

First method is to somehow keep the boat away from the dock at all times so that in never impacts it. ie...mooring whips or arms.

Second method is to keep the boat close to the dock and use bumbers to cushion the impact. ie...TideMinderhttp://www.tideminders.com/s

Any other suggestions/thoughts?







Out with the old in with the new.



I should have switched this line out long ago.



These are the largest bumbers that Wal Mart carries, but I want bigger ones.

Many people here have a pulley on the piling with a weight on one end and the line tied to the boat on the other. As the boat goes up and down with the tide the weight goes up and down also and keeps the line tight the entire time.

you could throw it out on a mooring buoy

Get a huge weight and sink it and tie it up to that

peedee wrote:Many people here have a pulley on the piling with a weight on one end and the line tied to the boat on the other. As the boat goes up and down with the tide the weight goes up and down also and keeps the line tight the entire time.

Interesting. I never thought of that. Where are you located?

If you are really talking about a hurricane your boat could end up on the dock ... or in the living room.

Think of what 5-6 extra feet of water does to high tide. That could just be a Cat 1 if it comes in from the west and the eye goes north of you.

GregF wrote:If you are really talking about a hurricane your boat could end up on the dock ... or in the living room.

Think of what 5-6 extra feet of water does to high tide. That could just be a Cat 1 if it comes in from the west and the eye goes north of you.

I'm thinking preparing more for just the typical summer squall. If a hurricane is headed this way all bets are off. I'll have to take the boat out and head for Georgia.

Your only real answer is some kind of anchor point out on that starboard quarter.
The mooring buoy is still an idea but figuring out what to use as an anchor is your main problem. To work, you are talking about hundreds of pounds.
I do have some 3/8" SS cable, left over from a cable replacement on my lift, I could send you.

Maybe thread 8 or 10 bags of concrete on the cable, letting them fall to the bottom one at a time and then connect the mooring buoy to the end. How deep is the water, about 10 feet from the stern of your boat?

better off using some kind of heavy metal weight. A manhole cover or something like that comes to mind.

I have a preformed concrete weight I have on a mooring buoy for visiting friends when they come to my dock and its too rough. The problem with concrete is it becomes lighter in the water.

One man hole cover is net near heavy enough to do much. BTW everything gets lighter in water ... about 64 pounds per cubic foot where Ron lives.

I don't think I can do that in our subdivision anyway. They have some pretty strict building and canal regulations. I would be afraid that some drunk idiot would run over the line and drag my boat with it. I live on the main canal so we get alot of traffic plus there is a pontoon boat rental company that does business there, and they have lots of inexperienced (to put it nicely) customers. At least if I sunk a pylon it would be more visible.

I'd probably pull the boat out of the water then.

That or put a ton of tires on the dock.

I live in Delaware, so we don't get hurricanes, But we always seem to get a bad noreaster and a full moon at the same time. And we have very large tidal swings between low and high tide. When we have bad storms pulley system seems to work

You don't get hurricanes in Delaware "often" but it does happen.

My boat has lived through several hurricanes, including two major ones (Charley and Wilma). From my experience it is best to get it away from the dock if you can come up with decent anchor points. I had it come up through the roof of my lift once in a fairly minor storm. The only thing that saved me was the surge did not come with the wind so I could sit out there and baby sit it until the tide went back down. I did end up with some minor damage but nothing serious. Since then, I tie it out in the open, only using the 2 outboard lift pilings as anchor points and using another piling I installed for the purpose to anchor the stern. There was an existing piling about 30 feet across the basin I can use for the 4th corner. These lines are long enough to compensate for quite a bit of surge tide. I tie to the lift rings on the toons, not cleats on the rail or deck. As BMR found out, cleats can pull out, although in his case it was a dock cleat. I don't really worry about the wind that much. This boat has been 85 or more before on the trailer and at a sustained 70-75 for hours
That is a good thing about having a "clean deck" pontoon boat. There is not much there to get blown away. I have 3 poly boxes on the boat and I tie them down.

You are lucky Greg because it seems like the water around you is pretty private so you have a lot more options. My boat is sitting on the water equivelant of US HWY 19 so I can't do too much away from the dock.

The setup I am leaning towards for now is to use a set of TideMinders attached to the middle piling, and running a line from the stern around the piling (with the TideMinders) up to the bow. I will still keep all three of my lines that I currently use attached, but I will keep this new line tight so that the boat stays close to the dock. I will get some more bumbers and pad the piling better. As you can see from the photo I only have to worry about the dock hitting the boat on high tide.

I like this temporary fix until I can build my floating dock, or have another piling installed of the starboard. A large storm surge will still be a problem, but if that happens I'll get the boat out of the water. What do you think?

Tide minders need a clean piling that they can slide up and down. It would hang up under the dock and stop moving pretty quick in a surge.

If you had that 4th piling out off the aft starboard quarter your tide minder would do something for you.

Bear in mind, even a a mild surge tide will be over that dock. Look at your FEMA map.