Mooring Whips

[Ted]

Greetings... haven't posted in a while but I am still around.

I am curious to know if anybody has experience with mooring whips. I just purchased a lake lot and we are building a house on it! There is a dock - in need of repair - and I am beginning to strategize about how I am going to tie up the boat. I don't really want to tie up with the boat hitting bumpers on the dock all day long, and I am not ready to shell out a couple grand for a lift (hey - lake lots are spendy!).

My options are:

1.  Tie if off away from the dock and let it swing on a mooring ball (I would have to drop something heavy into the lake which I don't really want to).
2.  Drop a couple of extra posts in the water, parallel to the dock, and tie off in marina fashion. This is probably the cheapest option but there is some work to do if I go this route.
3.  Use mooring whips. They aren't cheap as I think I would have to purchase the 12 or 14 footers with a base that would tilt back and away from the boat.

Any thoughts or experience on this?

[Reighnman]

We use them on our 24ft. Grady-white fishing boat without any issues but she doesn't have rigging to get around. Depending on the angle you come into the dock, the rigging could be an issue. We loop the whip lines around the whips when leaving so the line doesn't grab any pole tips. You mention tilting them away from the boat which I'm guessing is to avoid the rigging but the ones we have(and had) aren't made to adjust easily. My CP19 is docked on a plastic floating dock and I use bumpers. In the past we used cheap(er) plastic 8ft whips on an 18ft. center console. How rough is the lake? We're docked in a lagoon so it's protected from wave action aside from the speeding fool on the weekends.

[Ted]

The lake is about 3,500 acres, so it's pretty good size and I assume that if the wind is in the right direction there would be plenty of wave action. The lot (and dock) are located next to a canal which connects to five other lakes. I haven't seen many boats come through, but I bet that there are occasional "speeding fools" who come through the canal and goose it, creating some additional waves.

Some of the whips I have looked at have tilting bases, so you untie and then the whip tilts back away from the boat. More expensive, of course!