Keeping boat hulls away from damaging scrapes
A fender is a piece of soft padding placed between a boat’s hull and a pier or another boat. Fenders are usually made of vinyl plastic, shaped like fat sausages, and filled with air. Some are shaped more like large round balloons, and are favored where there is constant motion in all directions between a boat and another object.The typical color for a fender is white, to match the boat’s hull, but high fashion appears to have mounted a determined invasion on fenders, for even the more respectable boating catalogs now offer them in such unlikely colors as hunter green, teal, gray, and cranberry.
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| A fender with an eye at both ends gives you the option of hanging it horizontally. |
There is also a wide variety of fender accessories, such as fabric socks to keep them out of the sun and further protect topsides from scuffing, lanyards on height-adjustable clips that do away with “hard-to-untie knots,” and stainless steel storage containers.The larger the fender, the better. The limiting factor for most boats is stowage space, because you need at least three and should probably carry four or five. Fenders make good anchor buoys in emergencies.The minimum diameter of fenders should be about 1 inch for every 5 feet of boat length (about 15 mm for every m).
