Hard edges
Having almost succumbed to a similar scenario I extend my sincere condolences to your friend, Paul. In a similar storm in the fall of 2005, the outer half of the floating pier to which my slip's finger was attached broke the (large) bolt of one of the two steel hinges holding it to the shoreward half of the pier. I was very fortunate in the fact that it was sufficiently late in season that the other half of the double-loaded slip I shared was empty and I had run a pair of 50ft dock lines across to its finger, creating a cat's cradle mooring to suspend Persephone away from my own finger. I had plenty of fenders rigged all round, and was "sleeping" aboard to be ready to adjust as necessary. I was jolted fully awake around 2AM by a change in the various grinding and banging noises caused by the vigorous pitching of the floating docks. When I came on deck, I was shocked to see that only one very tortured hinge held the entire outboard half of my pier-and-fingers to the shoreward half. The harbor swells on top of the storm surge couldn't have been much more than 3 feet - a height I'd find laughable at sea. In that situation, however, with Persephone so close to some very hard and heavy (moving) objects I certainly wasn't laughinig as they twisted the two piers back-and-forth around that single hinge.. The pitching of the dock was so severe that there was no way I could stand on it, and I had to crawl over to attach some spare docklines to lash the two halves together with springs betwen cleats on one and those on the other. After a very nervous couple of hours, the marina hands returned from rescuing a beautiful new Tartan 4100 from her perch just south of us where she'd blown ashore when the surge/swells broke out a screw-in mooring (!) to which she'd been tied. With unbelievable courage, one of them actually managed to push a long bolt through the hinge plates while they (and the pier on which he lay) heaved up and down past one another at a frightening rate. The fact he didn't loose that hand amazes me to this day. His courage is the main reason that that entire dock - pier, fingers, boats and me - wasn't swept down onto the neighboring dock full of boats. When (not if) that second hinge had twisted itself to failure, my 5/8" lines could never have held all that mass, and the intervening fairway was too narrow for me to attempt to motor free in that event. Seeing the video of the docks at DiMillo's heaving up and down brought back very unpleasant memories. If you've never tried to stand on docks moving that much, you'll never understand how violent such apparently small movement can be. I doubt that any hull can withstand being speared by a violently heaving dock. Please offer your friend my sympathies for his loss. Fair winds (and gentle seas).
