Piling protector for floating dock?

D

DaveT

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Oct 15, 2005
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19310
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My marina moved me to a new slip this year, and I have a very tight squeeze in front of a piling. With the strong winds and currents we sometimes get, it's going to be tough to avoid rubbing against the piling sometimes, when I go in or back out of the slip.

Does anyone know of some kind of floating ring or something that you can get to go on a piling that would work with a floating dock? Attaching those rubber strips to the piling won't work well because the chain that attaches the dock to the piling will trash the strips over time.

- Dave
 
Why not use your rub rails? That's what they're there for....
 
My rub rails have a stainless strip running along the outer edge. It's screwed in every few feet. If I rub against a piling, some of the piling smudges against the stainless, and gets embedded into the slots in the screws. Not a huge deal, but I'd rather be hitting rubber than wood.
 
I used to use a strip of carpet stapledto twhen I had the Sea Ray. Kept my dad from dong the samhe pilinge thing when he ran the boat (we tried to keep those occasions to a minimum). You could also use a plain old fender when you come into the slip - just hang it sideways like its meant to be used.
 
Just a suggestion...You can tie 3 large fenders into a tight triangle around the piling, just allow enough room to float up & down with the tide.
 
Art - thanks for that suggestion. I think I'll do that if nobody knows of a specifically made thing for pilings. That idea would work well for anything but hitting the piling with the swim platform, which would probably slide under the fenders.

Charlie - the carpet thing wouldn't work. The dock floats, so the carpet would be underwater at high tide, and would also get trashed by the chain that goes around the piling from the dock.
 
what about PVC pipe? The schedule 30 you can get in pretty large dimensions, we use a schedule 40/6 inch on our slip, pricey, through a plumbing wholesale place, via a lumber yard, but works well... we just slipped over the existing stuff and works great and no marks on the rub rail.

Just a thought...
 
I'd be inclined to squirt an old tire full of aerosol foam so it'll float and drop it over the top of the piling. Might leave "skid" marks on the boat though.
 
I used one inch thick by 1½ wide ultra high molecular weight polyethylene strips screwed to the piling at our West Avenue slip. The screws were countersunk half way through so the rub rail couldn't hit them.

I thought it was pretty original until I saw that Disney World was doing the same thing for their ferry boats except they used wood colored UHMW polyethylene and, of course, much larger.

Very effective.
 
Most of the floating docks we've used have the rubber strips or carpet attached but they don't go to the low tide waterline. If you are protecting the bow and rubrail, you wouldn't need it to be as low as that would you?
 
I have a floating dock and discovered the hard way that anything you fasten to the pilings has to go far enough up and down that the dock guides, chain, whatever can't catch on it and rip it off.
 
I had to dig through some old bookmarks but these two ideas might be worth considering:
http://www.tideties.com/
http://www.moor-ring.com/

Not exactly what you're after but maybe those folks could point you in the right direction.
 
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