"Wayne.B" wrote
http://blizzard.zmm.com/whips/movie.wmv

There are some alternatives to the mooring whips which I've
seen used elsewhere and would be more effective:

Thanks for the suggestions. A lift would be great, but I just can't justify
the expense. A lot of people here use floating lifts, the kind with a pair
of pontoons that you sink under the boat and then inflate with an air pump
to raise it. They look a little precarious to me, with their relatively high
center of gravity. Fixed lifts are a bit of a problem in most places here
because the slope of the bank make it difficult to get a good footing on the
bottom. The water is about 12 feet deep at the edge of my dock, and
continues at that angle for quite some distance. A mooring ball would be
handy, but I'd probably need some kind of dispensation from the Corpse of
Engineers to put something that far out toward the channel, and again I'd
have the problem of anchoring it on the slope. The mooring whips are doing
the job well enough for now.