We all know boats are safer ashore when there's a storm coming, but what do you do
when you have to leave your boat in the slip? Today I'm going to walk you through
the steps necessary to show you how to secure your boat so it has the best
possible chance of surviving the storm. Hi. Mark Corke from BoatUS Magazine. If
you find this video useful, don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel and
also hit the like button. Let's start with the basics. We're going to need at
least 12 lines, and they should be at least double the length of the boat. So
let's get started. The lines need to be in excellent condition. I've just bought
these. They're brand new. This is three strand nylon, which has got lots of
stretch, ideal for tying up the boat when there's a hurricane coming. This is
double strand rope. It's seen better days, and it's very frayed. This is
something I should not be using. To tie up my boat, I'm going to be using three
strand nylon. This is 5/8 diameter, but it's always
better to use a thicker diameter than you think you might need. My boat's a
32 foot trawler, and this is ideal for that. If you have a smaller boat, you can
go thinner, but I wouldn't really go under half an inch in diameter. So let's
get started by making the lines off to the cleat. Some lines like this one have
a loop in the end ready. This one does not, so I'm going to have to pass this
through the chalk and then make it off on the cleat. And then I've got a helper
so I'm going to pass this ashore. So it's important to remember that whenever
possible that we don't have more than two lines on a cleat. That reduces chafe
and it also means that the cleat itself is not overloaded. I've added a line to
the other side now, and you can see that they cross behind the boat. The reason
for this is it gives better chafe protection and also gives me more shock
absorbency. The other thing is that if I boat with outboards on the back, I
probably wouldn't want to do this because the propeller would chew into
the lines and cut through the rope. I've secured the bow in exactly the
same way as I've secured to stern, except you'll notice two things: One is I've
actually tied to a piling farther away from the boat. That gives me a chance
to allow for the storm surge as the boat rises and also gives me more shock
absorbency. The other thing that you'll notice is that I haven't crossed the
lines at the bow. I've just run straight from the chock
straight to the piling here. If I'd crossed them over, they would be round the front
of the boat and actually the anchor would cut into them and they wouldn't
last very long at all. So I've just finished tying off the boat
now, and we've got two lines -- they're just different colors and are actually both
the same. The reason for that is if one chafes through, we'll make sure that we
have a backup so the boat isn't free. And the other thing there is that you'll
notice that they're quite slack, and that's to allow for the storm surge. So
as the boat rises up, it's not going to go drum tight and gonna break something.
Now that I've finished tying off the bow and the stern, it's time to add the
spring lines. These are very important because they stop the boat
from surging back and forth in the slip and damaging the side of the boat. Now
that I've finished tying a boat up, one important step is chafe protection,
because you might not think it but when the boat moves backwards and forwards it
will saw through these ropes very quickly. There's a couple of ways of
doing this. One I've used some old jeans here, old blue jeans. They will need
to be whipped to the line to hold it in place with some whipping twine, but much
more convenient is these ready bought ones which have a hook-and-loop system
and they grip the line. And that's all you need to do, and that holds it in
place. That'll protect the line now. Now that I've secured the boat, I'm
pretty confident it's not going to move and it's going to be as safe as I can
possibly make it for the coming storm. Don't forget to check out our hurricane
playlist on YouTube and also go to a boatus.com website where you'll find
a hurricane preparation and resource guide.