How To Protect Your Boat & Lines

Stopping your boat snatching at its mooring lines in harbour is essential to protect your boat, says Miranda Delmar-Morgan

- Miranda Delmar-Morgan

While most marinas are well sheltered, there are plenty that are subject to surge, either when a big sea is running outside, such as Ramsgate, or when the tide comes over a sill, such as Guernsey’s St Peter Port, which suffers in strong easterlies. Even inshore at least one marina in Plymouth becomes bouncy in gales. Baiona in Galicia suffers surge at the slightest provocation. And in marinas that are sheltered from waves, strong winds can still make yachts tug at their mooring lines with considerable force.

Combined with the strong sunlight and degradation caused by UV, yachts left in these marinas will exhaust their rubber snubbers with alacrity.

If you are about to leave your boat in a strange marina for any length of time an observation of how the resident yachts are secured will tell you all you need to know. If you see compensators, snubbers, and jury-rigged tyres in abundance then you would be wise to take note. The locals plainly know something that you don’t.

Whether you are on board or not, it pays to have a boat with well-snubbed mooring lines. Not only will it give you a quieter, more comfortable night on board, but it will also protect your boat from bouncing back and forwards in its berth, from excessive shock loads on fittings, and from chafe.

When boats heave about, they start snatching at their lines which can then become noisy, particularly if they are multi brand lines which are constructed specifically to have no give in them at all. For this reason, you should avoid the temptation to use old halyards and sheets for shorelines, however commendable the desire to recycle is. Three-strand nylon rope has a lot more give in it, making it much more suited to absorbing the shocks of restraining a moving boat.