Fenders; Up, or Down?

Just to return to a comment I made on a blog a couple of days ago regarding fenders. We always bring our fenders in when we are moving. To us they are basically to prevent noise, damage when moored up alongside the edge, pontoon or another boat. We have had the same fenders since we go the boat six years ago.

This was us leaving our winter moorings at Fettlers Wharf on the Rufford Arm this April. As you can see they are secured to a lug on the roof by a snap hook. The disadvantage of this is the they are in fixed location, front, middle and back of the boat (port and st'bd of course) and that where the rope goes over the hand rail it damages the paint edge. I also have some inflatable fenders that I have retrieved from the water in the past as well as some rigid tyres for the 'Shroppie Shelf' and similar.

I have often wondered why people leave their fenders down when cruising as they can not add anything to collision and damage avoidance as the likelihood of a boat actually landing on the those little strips of rubber hose are infinitely small. Even more unexplainable is why some have them actually trailing in the water as they travel?

I can more easily understand why a GRP cruiser would have many fenders as they are much more fragile than a steel boat. On the Thames I did notice that some of them did pick them up when leaving the lock though. This was our companion on the Ribble crossing to the Lancaster Canal in April.

I'm not sure how many fenders the cruisers lose in a year but I have 'won' three or four from the water that must have come from them.

We decided to count all the boats we passed and record whether they had their fenders up or down. Originally we started as we passed through Polesworth on the Coventry Canal. We decided that we would discount all boats moored on the off side as 'permanently' moored. We would count all boats on the towpath side to see if they had fenders out on their off side. We would also count all moving boats we passed. My best guess was that it would almost 50/50, up and down! Between Polesworth and Whittington we counted 97 boats for the survey, but didn't record whether they were moored or moving. I originally differentiated between private, hire and GRP boats. The number of GRP boats was very small and all had fenders down. The number of hire boats was still small, about 5 and all had their fenders up! Of the private boats there were 54% with their fenders up and obviously 46% with their fenders down!! So I wasn't too far out. The figures for those with them down includes two that clearly had had fernders down but on the day of the data collection had not as they had been already pulled off with just a small knotted bit of rope round the lugs.

You can see here on the Leeds/Liverpool that there is a mixed bag.

You can see here on the Llangollen that the hire boat on the lock landing having their lunch (that's another story!!) does not have fenders rigger on the off side.

When I looked at the figures I thought that maybe some folk may deploy their fenders on the off side when moored as some sort of protection??? So to ensure that the figures were more robust I should take a new sample of only moving boats, and this we did over two days, as the numbers were much smaller when counting only moving boats, between Whittington and Stone.

The number of boats passed under way was 57. 52 were private boats and remarkably the figures were the same 54% had their fenders down when moving and 46% had them up and clear. 5 hire boats were passed all with their fenders up, and one GRP with them down.

I had started to notice that the boats that had their fenders out all the time were those that were designed with little eyes rebated into the hull, or with a little lug welded on to the gunwhale. This meant that there was a position to permanently tie, shackle or clip in a fender. As these are low down, out of sight line maybe they get forgotten, or too far to bend down to do anything with. Admittedly some had them loose enough to be able to flick them up to ride on the top of the gunwhale.

These are some of the boats that we returned south on the Ribble Link with. You can see the first boat has his fenders suspended from eyes on the hull. The second boat has them hanging from the roof hand rail via some wooden hangers that fit over the profile of the rail. These are very prone to breaking if subjected to a sideways pull and if they don't break, and drag, they must damage the paint.

The reason that we started this project as the boat ahead of us in the bottom lock at Atherstone lost a fender when exiting the lock and I commented that I hope that it wasn't us that found it. Several time a solid tubular black fender has got caught in our propeller and been jammed so rigidly that it has stalled the engine. This cannot be good for the engine or the gear box. As they don't float they can not be avoided. Much like the folk who pile wood on their roof to such an extent that some of it falls off and floats around until inevitably it gets waterlogged and sinks. We have been unlucky to have picked up logs like these, cut to stove size rather than the size cut by the contractors working on the banks, and have had to pay hundreds of pounds to be dry docked to change propellers and have blades straightened and balanced.

It was interesting to note that this old working butty had no fenders down. I suppose in the days of working boats they weren't owned so paintwork didn't have to be paid for by the user so they didn't perhaps pay so much heed to things like that.

In the Stone area I started to see the hire boats from Aqua Narrow boats and noticed that they have little rebates in the hull to which are attached seemingly permanently hanging fenders. I therefore conclude that the vast majority of the boats with fenders down when on the move are those that have fixing boats that are out of sight or too low down fore people to see, or make the effort to remove them when not alongside.

C&RT recommend that fenders are lifted when underway, and of course there are several locks around the system where if you have them down you are much more likely to get jammed in a 'thin' lock. Todays steel boats are fitted with steel rubbing strips at bow and stern and along the full length of the boat a little above the water line, at coping stone level, that will take must abrasion when passing through locks etc. I would say that fenders are really only of any use when moored, stationary, alongside.

So; should you travel with fenders down? Yes or no?