Tender painters - Newcomers, please keep them long!

  • Thread starter Thread starter Anonymous
  • Start date Start date
[ QUOTE ]
To add to others comments, it is really anti-social to leave dinghies tied short and unbelievably so to lock them to cleats on short wires/chains.

[/ QUOTE ]

Maybe it is just the world we live in now.... if it ain't locked down, it'll be gone.... It seems nothing can be trusted these days.
 
True, I always lock ours but with a very long ss chain. Now that the summer is here it is getting difficult in San Antonio with people leaving short painters. What seems to be happening is that since some people lock up to short cable/chains others who would normally have left a long chain instead tie to a short one otherwise they will have to clamber over everything. It is a vicious circle.
 
[ QUOTE ]
Maybe it is just the world we live in now.... if it ain't locked down, it'll be gone.... It seems nothing can be trusted these days.

[/ QUOTE ]

It is easy to think that but is it really true in this context? I wouldn't leave a tender and outboard unlocked overnight or longer but for a few hours or even all day have never worried about it wherever we have been and never lost one or anthing from one in over 30 years cruising around UK and Europe. There are nearly always people coming and going and any thief would need to be pretty determined to steal one in full view, not knowing if that couple walking towards them might be the owners or maybe know the owners.
 
[ QUOTE ]
I wouldn't leave a tender and outboard unlocked overnight or longer but for a few hours or even all day have never worried about it wherever we have been and never lost one or anthing from one in over 30 years cruising around UK and Europe.

[/ QUOTE ]I keep mine locked if for no other reason than being able to say, truthfully, that it was locked if stolen. Would the insurers make a deduction if you don't lock it?

I was in the port police office here in San Antonio the other day and someone was reporting the theft of a boat - the police asked if it had been locked. The owner said no, and shrugged. My Spanish isn't perfect but I think that his was a larger fishing day-boat and it was stolen in broad daylight in San Antonio harbour on the island of Ibiza.

The other point against not locking is that with the majority being locked, if someone wants to steal a boat or go joyriding, presumably they will take an unlocked one?
 
The majority are NOT locked where we go, unless they are local's tenders and left there for the season. If it was that necessary to lock everything up as a visitor, I might want to sail somewhere else less traumatic, with a Navy escort in close attendance!
 
Almost every tender is locked in the parts of Spain we have been to so far. No problem, really, we lock the yacht when we go ashore, lock the car,...why not lock the tender?
 
David

I think you must have been badly frightened by an Insurance man as a youngster and punished by being beaten over the head with a copy of Colregs!

Just joking /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Robin
 
Charter dinghys tend to need to be locked in the Caribbean as they are otherwise returned to the charterer as "We found this floating - is it yours?", with a hefty tip expected.

This did actually happen to me when I was anchored and had returned very drunk the night before. In the early morning the dinghy was nowhere to be seen until we'd started breakfast in the cockpit and a couple of boat boys turned up towing it. It may well have been my bad tieing up and I didn't think otherwise until I read about the scam a long time later.


What does embarrass me, though, is that charter companies often supply a wire which really isn't long enough for a crowded dock, leaving you with no option but to annoy others.
 
Robin, I think there is a basic duty of care. Making the right signals and locking your property are pretty basic and while maybe an insurer would not question too deeply he would have every right to. In household insurance, would your insurers pay out if you had the burglars and had not locked-up, or armed the alarm?

ISTR from car insurance in the past (I am now car-less but boat for car was a good trade /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif) that they don't pay out if you don't lock your car. Or your bike?

At the end of the day it comes down to 'due care' - if you don't take 'due care' of your property, why should the insurers bail you out? Anyway, I go to some trouble to make sure that that doesn't happen to me and hopefully in so doing it reduces the chances of the loss in the first place, pleasing both me and my insurers /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

As a result of my responsible attitude my insurers give me a 50% discount on all premiums. Not. /forums/images/graemlins/grin.gif
 
Yes understood of course but it is still a question of how far to go. I have seen wording on marine insurance that says warranted the outboard is locked to the transom or to the boat whatever, but never insistence that the tender is locked to the shore or to the boat! How do you for example lock up tender and outboard on a beach? Do you also lock the spinnaker pole to the boat or even the BBQ?

I'm a sucker anyway, when our boat was 'done' the £600 loss value was the same as I would have lost in paying the insurance excess and lost NCB, so I didn't claim anyway!

Robin
 
[ QUOTE ]
How do you for example lock up tender and outboard on a beach?

[/ QUOTE ]

Locking the o/b to the tender isn't hard but locking the tender to the beach usually means heading for a stretch of beach near a palm tree or other immovable object and dragging it up - not always possible of course, so I tend to take the kill-cord if I can't lock it. I never lock in the UK - even the main hatch of my boat for over a year.

Re: BBQs and spinnaker poles - I guess it depends on what gets stolen in the area you are sailing in. I've never heard of any problems with those.
 
It's ok for a public pontoon, but when you rent a spot on the pontoon as we did once, and find a dozen rubber ducks tied up to your ring on ones return, long or short you are not happy. It reached a point when people used to tow out the unofficial tenders and tie them to a buoy in the middle of the marina.
We had a short painter and padlock for security. and paid for our lenght of pontoon.

Brian
 
Re: Tender painters - Two digressions!

Brian, Sure, I was talking about public pontoons. How you choose to tie up your tender on your own private berth is entirely up to you.

But you do raise a point...people who park tenders on other people's pontoons thus blocking the rightful owner. How would they like it if they came home to find someone in their drive, forcing them to find a meter in the street!?

And another point comes out of this...ports, harbours, rivers, etc., IMO have a duty to provide a place to tie up tenders. They all benefit from the trade that local businesses get from yachts and they should make safe provision. I would extend this to the supply of water. Maybe by coin-op dispenser these days, or very slow-fill hoses, to allow people to fill containers. David
 
Re: Tender painters - Two digressions!

[ QUOTE ]
ports, harbours, rivers, etc., IMO have a duty to provide a place to tie up tenders.

[/ QUOTE ]

Surely most places do? The popular destinations know that it's in their best interests to do so. The less popular ones either can't afford it, or simply see no need. I agree about the problem of boats tied with short painters, but in most places I think that there is reasonable provision.

If you make it a duty for them to provide something they will probably start to charge extras. Harbour and dinghy dues?
 
Re: Tender painters - Two digressions!

[ QUOTE ]
But you do raise a point...people who park tenders on other people's pontoons thus blocking the rightful owner. How would they like it if they came home to find someone in their drive, forcing them to find a meter in the street!?

[/ QUOTE ]

Tell me about it - quite a few from some of the swinging moorings in Chichester dump their dinghy in front of our boat and wander off, making it impossible for us to leave. So if you do that, and find your dinghy on the drying side of the pontoon - now you know why /forums/images/graemlins/wink.gif

Rick
 
[ QUOTE ]
...and when did you last participate in a selection of RYA courses?


[/ QUOTE ]

...and when did you last participate in an English language course?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Share this page

Top