I'm uploading a short video of my boat being thrown around in the marina where I'm located at the moment. The video is not showing all the movement well but it's all I've got. The movement was not only back and forth as seen in this video but also side to side. The main dock broke next to my left foot where I'm standing in this video and two of us are looking at how best to stabilize both the boats and the dock when this video was taken.
I'm not sure how long it lasted, at least 6 hours with extreme movement, possibly longer. In other parts of the marine several finger piers were also broken. At the time of this video the broken dock was allowing the blue boat next to mine to crash into the side of my boat as the storm surge pushed both boat and broken pier side to side. I had previously put bumpers on that side and the blue boat also had bumpers so no damage had occurred at that point but we definitely had to stabilize the situation not only for these two boats but also because if that pier broke across it's width, all of the boats on the far side would be thrashing around with limited mooring.
Thankfully both myself and the other guy with me carry a lot of line. We secured the blue boat from the port side to cleats beyond the break in the dock and we ran lines from my starboard side to cleats several finger piers down the dock. We added in more bumpers between the two boats such that with the added lines and bumpers the two boats were not hitting each other with force and no damage to either boat was sustained.
I'll describe one trick that I used while doing the long lines. I would take the end of the line and do a half wrap around my waste. You take the line with one hand, pass it around your waste and hold the other side with the other hand. Then you can essentially "sit" into the line giving all the strength in your legs into tightening the line. At first the guy working with me thought I was nuts (he may be right, but for not this reason). But once he saw how it worked he was totally on board. I ran the line tensioning, he tied at the cleat.
The two people have to work together very closely, it's very dangerous for the person at the cleat.
Take the line and run under the side of the cleat where the tie-off will begin, pull the line tight, timing it with the boat movement. There will be some back and forth plus the surge has different amplitudes. Once the line is was tight as possible, I had to time my release of line tension at just the right moment so the line can be cleated with as much tension as possible and the guy at the cleat must be very careful to not get any fingers caught. With good teamwork you can get the lines very tight. The first time we did this, the guy working with me was pretty nervous. But we established good communications with our timings and the rest of these tie-offs became quite efficient.
dj
I'm not sure how long it lasted, at least 6 hours with extreme movement, possibly longer. In other parts of the marine several finger piers were also broken. At the time of this video the broken dock was allowing the blue boat next to mine to crash into the side of my boat as the storm surge pushed both boat and broken pier side to side. I had previously put bumpers on that side and the blue boat also had bumpers so no damage had occurred at that point but we definitely had to stabilize the situation not only for these two boats but also because if that pier broke across it's width, all of the boats on the far side would be thrashing around with limited mooring.
Thankfully both myself and the other guy with me carry a lot of line. We secured the blue boat from the port side to cleats beyond the break in the dock and we ran lines from my starboard side to cleats several finger piers down the dock. We added in more bumpers between the two boats such that with the added lines and bumpers the two boats were not hitting each other with force and no damage to either boat was sustained.
I'll describe one trick that I used while doing the long lines. I would take the end of the line and do a half wrap around my waste. You take the line with one hand, pass it around your waste and hold the other side with the other hand. Then you can essentially "sit" into the line giving all the strength in your legs into tightening the line. At first the guy working with me thought I was nuts (he may be right, but for not this reason). But once he saw how it worked he was totally on board. I ran the line tensioning, he tied at the cleat.
The two people have to work together very closely, it's very dangerous for the person at the cleat.
Take the line and run under the side of the cleat where the tie-off will begin, pull the line tight, timing it with the boat movement. There will be some back and forth plus the surge has different amplitudes. Once the line is was tight as possible, I had to time my release of line tension at just the right moment so the line can be cleated with as much tension as possible and the guy at the cleat must be very careful to not get any fingers caught. With good teamwork you can get the lines very tight. The first time we did this, the guy working with me was pretty nervous. But we established good communications with our timings and the rest of these tie-offs became quite efficient.
dj
