"Jeff" wrote .

Although I've seen that setup a few times for special
situations, I've
never seen it at a marina for all boats, and I've been to
a large
number of marinas, especially in the North East. Its true
that it
might be a tad more secure, but I've never seen a dock
line fail at
the dock cleat, its always been on the boat - usually at
the toerail,
etc. When the dock end fails, its because the cleat pulls
out.

The worst part of it is that I would much prefer to carry
my own
docklines with me, and I have lines made up specially for
handling
from the boat. If a marina provided those shackled lines,
I would
probably ignore them. Certainly they are useless for
approaching the
dock with a larger boat, and they would just get in the
way and
perhaps damage other lines.

Perhaps rb's slip get so much wake and chop that they need
a special
setup. Or maybe there are so many newbies that its
assumed that they
don't know how to hitch a cleat. Or maybe something about
the
dockominium regs means that management is responsible for
one end of
the line, so they prefer to make it idiot proof.

Or perhaps rb's a liar.