Cleaning up the docking paraphernalia

For a small boat, Sunset Chaser carries an awful lot of docking and mooring paraphernalia. Small boats are inherently much more vulnerable to storms than large ones, and get knocked around more by smaller waves, so our inventory shouldn't come as a surprise: four 4"x12" fenders, two 6"x15" fenders, seven 3/8" docklines (four 12', three 20'), plus of course the anchor, its rode, and assorted light cordage.

It didn't start out this way, of course. When we launched her in 2001, Sunset Chaser carried just the little fenders and three dock lines. It didn't take long before the combination of a low, rickety dock and a strong wind led us to reinforce her spray rails with aluminum edging. Then came more cleats, more dock lines and more fenders in an ever more elaborate attempt to keep the light little powerboat from riding up over her dock whenever the wind picked up. Next spring, we'll hopefully have a "final solution" as the cleat count grows to two mooring, one tie-down and four fender cleats on each side, and all these fenders and lines can be brought to bear simultaneously.

The fenders have been looking filthy and the dock lines have been getting stiff, so a bit of fall cleaning was in order. For the fenders, this is just a matter of general-purpose cleaner and elbow grease, turning this:

Dirty fenders

into this:

Clean fenders

Now and then I come across pretty canvas "fender covers" at the chandleries. I've never really understood the point- they're expensive, they chafe through in short order, and I don't think they really save much time: taking them off, washing them, bringing them back and putting them back on the fenders really can't take much less time than just scrubbing each fender down with a cleaner-soaked rag.

On the advice of some rock climber friends (thanks Barbara!) I tried running the dock lines through a cold/cold cycle in the washing machine, double rinsed. Although this worked wonderfully, I later discovered that this is usually done with the ropes isolated in mesh bags. Why? Well, lines tangle....

Tangled dock lines

Luckily, it took only a few minutes to untie the whole thing... next time, the lines will be kept isolated, somehow.

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