Pontoon Boat & Deck Boat Forum

I am new to pontoon boating. I want to leave my boat tied to the pier. We come to the cabin every other weekend. We are on Lake Martin in Alabama and the water level fluctuates. We have a stationary pier. I can't afford a floating dock until next year. Are mooring whips a good idea? What is the best way to tie the boat to the pier and leave it unattended for a couple of weeks at a time. Keep in mind in the summer the water can fluctuate one to five feet or more. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!!

Pictures of your dock would help! But, if it fluctuates that much I don't know of a safe sure way to handle it. I have a floating dock and have problems when the darn Corp of Engineers lets the water up and down that much and more. I do have friends who live there 24/7 and keep an eye on things, but even that's not 100%. The water went up 5 ft and our dock was up in the woods. We had the boat out and safe at the time. Then they let it down 3 ft in a week and out dock ended up on top of one of our dock tie posts. We had to cut the post off and push and pry our dock back in to the water. Another thing is how your land slopes or if you have a bank to waters edge. If you have a gentle slope down to the water it's nice, but the worst type to deal with your fixed or floating dock. If you have a nice bank of say four or five feet above waters edge then a floating dock with a long walk way anchored to a post on shore works best, but is expensive. A picture of a neighbors dock below shows it when water was normal. Next one shows water up 5 ft!

I left my old toon tied to the dock with just some slack in the rope, but our lake only fluctuates about a foot to foot and half. Not sure if the mooring whip would handle 5 ft of travel. How deep is the water at the dock? Think Overton or west marine has a gizmo that has a bungee cord, that you can anchor it deeper water and the stretched bungee pull the boat back out when released. Mooring buoys are the only other thing that I can think of next to a lift
doc

i can't answer your question, but i wanted to give a shout out to a local. we're up at smith. war eagle!

Being on the Chesapeake (tidal waters) our water level fluctuates anywhere from 3-4 sometimes 7 ft. (during hurricane surges). We have a floating dock, but some slips have just 4 pilings (2 on each side of the boat). The people in our marina just tie up leaving the ropes slack enough to allow for tidal fluctuation. In this situation you need good sized fenders as well to prevent damage to your boat. I'm 3 miles from our marina and stop by the boat every other evening though...

I don't know if these would help, but I was at Bass pro shop tonight and bought a couple of "ties' designed for tieing my toon up to the dock. They're looped on each end so you can just slip them over the "clete" on your boat and the other end over a post or whatever on the dock. These particular ties are elastic and will stretch from 5 to 7 feet. I'm sure you can get them in longer lengths. Might be something to think about... I would also make sure I had some bumpers ( guess that's what they're called ) hanging down between my boat and the dock to keep from beating hell out of my boat against the dock.

Roland
2010 Bennington 20 SFi
Yamaha 75 hp 4 stroke
2010 Toyota 4 Runner