Tuesday Tips #4: Locking your Dinghy to the Dock

Continuing on last weeks tip of locking your dinghy to your boat or tender sometimes you need to lock it to a dinghy dock as well.

We also carry a really long thick double loop security cable (something like this but I think ours is thicker - we got it at home depot) as well for places we are worried their really is a threat of the dinghy going missing. It fits through most chalks and/or through small spaces on the dock making it easy to find a place to lock the dinghy too. We can slip it around something and lock it right bake to the engine. This has worked well for us. Many people carry chain but that gets heavy and there is always a rust factor. We've had very little rust on the cable lock so we don't mind using it for locking the dinghy to the boat as well (unfortunately yes, they do go missing off the back of boats all the time.)

Tuesday Tips #3: Locking your Outboard

When we moved on the boat we had one of those bar type dinghy locks (here is an article I found on various dinghy locks so you can see what I'm talking about). After the first one rusted we bought another but decided it was more of a pain than it was worth so we went to the bike lock technique where we used a double loop security cable and locked it to the boat or dinghy. Not the best solution. Somewhere along the line someone introduced us to the simple just pad-lock it technique.

The two screw handles usually come close enough that you can put a lock right through them. Once the dinghy is screwed on tight just lock it up. Someone could get in there and cut the lock but most of the time it's more trouble than it is worth and they'll move onto the dinghy with no lock.