Chafe Gear for Docklines

Chafe gear doing its job.

After buying new dock lines for RoundAbout, we wanted to ensure they had a long life. This meant coming up with a way to protect against chafe.

While we usually prefer to anchor out, sometimes we need to go into a marina or tie up to a town quay. Tying up to the cleats while Med-mooring is hit or miss. Some of these cleats are ok, but a lot of the older ones are very rusty and have sharp edges. This isn't too much of a concern for a short stay, however, when we need to come in for longer periods of time, it could become an issue.

As we have been working to complete our to-do list for the boat, we have been chasing parts and suppliers. This means we are often tied up for a few days while we wait for a delivery. In our last case, it was almost two weeks. During those two weeks, we had crazy high winds which caused quite the swell to enter the marina. We saw other lines snap during the last storm, so felt a little safer with the chafe gear on our lines.

Jared bought reinforced pipe to use as our chafe gear (old leather or fire hose also can work well).

All tied up just before the big storm hit
( a little deja vu for us, as the last time we tied up in a spiderweb was prepping for a hurricane).