BOAT-COMPARATOR Guide

Fenders on a Rental Boat: How Many, Where, and How to Tie Them

Number, height, the right knot, special shapes, when to bring them in: everything a charterer should know about fenders — the best insurance for the deposit.

They are the least glamorous objects on board, and the ones that most often save the deposit: fenders absorb, in your place, every contact with the quay or the neighbour. A rental boat always carries them; you still need to hang them in the right place, at the right height, with the right knot.

How many, and where?

On a rental boat of 8 to 13 metres, count at least three fenders per side, concentrated where the hull is widest — the beam — since that is where the boat touches first, plus a spare for special cases. The classic beginner mistake is to stack everything at the bow and transom, which almost never touch the quay when moored alongside. Before the arrival manoeuvre, prepare both sides if you do not know which one will land: dropping a fender takes ten seconds, moving one mid-docking never happens in time.

The right height: the quay’s, not yours

Against a floating pontoon, the fender is set to bear on the rubbing strake and float just above the water. Against a fixed quay in tidal waters everything changes: the boat rides up and down the wall, and the fender must protect over the whole travel — this is where vertical cylindrical fenders, or even a rubbing board slipped between fenders and quay, earn their keep. Alongside another boat, set them at the neighbour’s rubbing-strake height; our guide to rafting up details that configuration, also frequent in locks.

The right knot — and the right support

The clove hitch, adjustable with one hand, is the standard for hanging a fender — add a half hitch if it stays overnight. Tie preferably to the lower lifeline or, better, to stanchion bases and cleats: a violent shock on a fender tied to the upper lifeline can bend it. The technique takes two minutes to learn with our guide to essential knots.

Why “come in slowly” remains the best fender

The energy a fender must absorb grows with the square of the berthing speed: dock twice as fast and you ask four times more of the foam and PVC. That is no figure of speech: port engineers dimension their fender systems on real measured berthing-speed campaigns, such as the one by Roubos, Groenewegen and Peters on large vessels in the port of Rotterdam, published in 2016 in Marine Structures (see the study on Google Scholar). The leisure-boating version fits in one sentence: never approach faster than the speed at which you accept to touch — the rest is in our guide to docking basics.

At sea they come in — at hand-back they get counted

Motoring along with fenders dangling is the universal marker of the beginner, and a fender ripped off by chop gets billed. Bring them in as you leave the channel, hang them out again on approach. At hand-back, count them: they are on the inventory, and a missing fender is charged against the deposit like any other equipment — the photographed check-out remains your best protection.

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