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There is a new (to me) product advertised in the April Sail Mag on the bottom right of p.105. Called "Freedom Fenders," the company claims these fenders will not pop of pilings. This may be the answer to Peter's quest. Check 'em out at www.freedomfenders.com
I bet this is a stupid question: but how do you get the freedom fender to line up on the piling? Or the six pilings. In a blow. They'll go the way of freedom fries.
Better idea is to lash 8 or ten to the piling.
I may have missed something on their website, but those things look pretty big - even for smaller boats. I don't know about their utility where locker space is at a premium.
Then there is the issue of cost. My two 50" white oak fender boards (and the white oak is a beautiful wood, and so nice to work with) will cost less than $100 ($44 for the rubber molded ends, $26 for the oak, perhaps $10 for the lines, shock cords, stain and varnish). About $40 each (plus a reasonable amount of elbow grease).
you will post some pics, right?
Heard of a type of plastic that the more it gets bashed the stronger it becomes. It may have had something to do with chain wells, but if it comes as sheet material it might be useful to protect the oak. Can't find it on plastics sites.
Hey, lash a couple of those f. fenders together and you got the (very heavy) dingy everybody's been looking for!
Looking at some of the Freedom Fender "in use" photos, it appears the FF's can be used as normal fenders as well as wrapping them around a piling. That should eliminate the need for any other fenders on board.
Also from the photos, the key to holding in place around a piling looks like having two fixed mounting points on the boat.
Wonder if these things inflate/deflate? If they did, it would sure reduce the storage space needed.
When I get them stained varnished, and the boat in the water, I'll post some pictures.
The water in the Great Lakes has dropped further this year and is expected to be at low water datum. It might even be a record low. The low water could be because of the drought (very little snowpack up north this past winter) or it could be because of all the communities in the Chicagoland area and the ever increasing amount of water they are pulling from the Lake and transferring out of the Lake basin and down the Mississippi waterway. But the low water is a huge concern for shipping as well as pleasure boating.
But getting back to the fender boards, the low water makes the case for their use even more compulsary because the dock decking which is usually used for the fenders to rub against are now several feet above the Ariel deck. The next major issue is how do you get up to the dock from the Ariel deck? A swim ladder may be the way.
Drought!?
So that's where all that rain we got this winter came from . I knew it wasn't ours .We haven't had 5 dry day in a row until this week .
Hey Theis , your water is flowing out Chesapeake Bay into the Atlantic . I collected about 5 gallons of it , I can mail it to you if it will help !
Hey Mike, water level is no problem for an Ariel. I'll just trim the keel and make it look like a McGregor. As for the water, my apologies. I had assumed we Chicagoans disposed of it through the sanitary canal down the Mississippi . Perhaps the sanitary canal runs out to the east coast instead. My apologies.
Back to the subject of fender boards though, I do want to correct an earlier statement. The fender board guards that are on the end of my fender boards in the making are listed in the West catalog this yyear at $31.49 a pair, not $22 as I had thought Total cost about $50 per fender). I must have gotten them with some sort of discount, or at last year's prices.
The Freedom Fender is also shown on page 623 for $65 each (. The good news is that they can be deflated and rolled up. The bad news is that they are only 26-32 inches long. When those spring lines start streching, the boat can move who knows how much (nylon lines, as I recall are good for a stretch up to 150% of the slack length). That being the case, the fender boards should be as long as possible, and 26-32 inches is not that long. The ones I am building are 50", and if I had the choice, I would make them longer but they would not fit in the lazarette. Another benefit of the wood fenders is that they have weight, and would be less likely, in my opinion, to be walked up on to the deck as the boat rolled.
Also in the West catalog (Page 622) is a 37" non-inflatable flat fender for $75.
In the whatever it is worth column: The fender board guards at the end of the fender board are $22.00, not the $31.49 as advertised in the West catalog. The catalog, I found, is mispriced according to a West retail store.