Mooring Whips vs Wake Watchers

[Boardstiff]

So I recently started a thread asking about boat fenders and what style/size was best suited to my boat (2005 SANTE). Since then I've purchased some fenders and had them tore off the boat due to excessive wake from boats passing to close to my dock. So I'm thinking I need to go a different route.
I was wondering if anyone has any experience with mooring whips and/or wake watchers. What are the pros and cons of each set up? which would you recommend?

[s_kelley2000]

I have never seen or used wake watchers but they seem interesting. Whips work great but they take some getting used to docking if you have a tower on your boat. You have to be out wide enough to miss the rear whip with the tower and then swing the tail in towards the dock once the tower passes it. Just takes some getting used to and it certainly helps if your dock is on the same side that your boat walks to when in reverse (port in your case). you can also come in next to the whips and then use the hanging ropes to pull you towards the dock.

[mnwakerider]

I used whips a while back on a 19' MC. Worked great, we did have a tower at one point and we had no issues docking. The whips were out of the way when we pulled into the dock (side tie only) and then unloaded, whipped down, covered and then pulled down the ropes to the bow and stern and it naturally just pulled out away from the dock 2 feet. Worked great.

[HS]

Dock whips are cool. The bases need to be anchored well into the dock joists as they can pull out of the decking. On heavy traffic days and depending on the boat's orientation to the passing boat wakes, the use of spring lines fore and aft might still be needed, as I have found when I dock at a friend's house on the lake. At his place, the dock we tie up to (with whips) has the boat facing perpendicular to the beach (bow facing out to the lake). When the big surf or WB wakes come in, the boat will ride the surge shoreward a bit, which seems to put more lateral load on the whips than the basic load to keep the boat away from the dock, so I add a couple spring lines (bow cleat to aft dock cleat; rear cleat to forward dock cleat) and the boat rides over the waves nicely and the dock whips keep the boat away from the dock as designed. At another pal's house, the whips and dock are parallel to the shoreline and spring lines are less of a concern. Most days are very calm, but on Sundays there can be a lot of boat chop and then a big roller set from a surf or WB wake.

[96SNEFI]

Ditto on the mooring whips and what HS said...spring lines. I have a rope going from the whip base out to one boat cleat with a loop. Then back to the dock at the other whip base. Then out to the other boat cleat with a loop. Then back to the dock to the first whip base. Hooking up is a simple matter of looping the upper whip-end rope and these spring line loops and I'm in. Release is just as easy and you're away. I do have little inline rope springs attached to the base for those shocking, jarring wave actions. No fussing with bumpers in and out, no tying and un-tying with fancy bowline knots or anything every time, no muss, no fuss. Easy peasy. I don't have a tower.

[Boardstiff]

Thanks for the advice guys.


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[Boardstiff]

No one ever used wake watchers? Seems like a pretty decent system as well.

http://youtu.be/XmEk6TC-43E



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[SilentSeven]

Never seen one until now.

Whoever did that youtube vid must have loved 60's era sex ed school movies....total throwback.

[96SNEFI]

I'm intrigued with the shocks on them but I would think spring lines would still be needed as the boat still has all the swing of the ropes coming off them. That's the main point of spring lines...to keep the boat in a mostly limited roaming space. With stiff-arm "whips" like those I can see why they would have the shocks. But the flexible fibreglass whips take up that shock in their flexibility.
I don't know...maybe the stiff-arm might be good...I wonder about the cost comparison.