Keeping your boat safe in a hurricane

Irma was a category 5 hurricane eventually making landfall in Florida in 2017

It’s now June of 2025, and the beginning of another hurricane season in Florida. We at ThePontoonCaptain have been successfully and safely securing our boats through many hurricanes and tropical storms over the years. The information we are passing on here reflects years of our own experiences, and observations of others’  experiences as well. This post is a bit long, so buckle up.

Before we start with the Dos, we'll start with a couple of Don'ts:

• Don’t assume that trailering your boat is the safe way to go. Your boat and trailer will float away in a storm surge, like the 9 foot storm surge brought to us by Hurricane Milton from 100 miles away last fall. Some areas the water levels on the beach were 8 ft high, and many communities were under 5 or 6 feet of water.

  
  

• Don't assume it's any safer putting your boat up on blocks in your backyard. A local boat club thought it best to pull all 25 of their boats and leave them on blocks on dry land. All of their boats were taken afloat by the storm surge and drifted off inland. When the storm waters receded, the boat club boats all landed randomly in peoples front yards, restaurant parking lots, and some just in the middle of the street. Also keep in mind, when your boat is on dry land, it is much more likely to be struck by flying furniture, debris, or a fallen tree limb.

  
  

• Don’t assume that having your vessel in a high and dry building is safe. Interestingly enough, insurance companies still make the false assumption that boats are best protected indoors. With every storm in Florida, high and dry buildings are ripped apart by hurricane force winds. Our own marina had its roof ripped off by Helene, and in the same storm, another neighboring marina lost a roof and the entire side of the building. Then the storm surge came in, and took all the boats inside the building that were on ground level afloat. Those boats came off the bunks they were resting on, floating around randomly inside, knocking into each other like ping pong balls in a lottery machine, damaging gelcoats if they're lucky . When the waters recede, these boats dont land back on their bunks. They land on bare ground all bunched up against other boats in a corner of the high and dry building.

  

• Never tie your boat to a floating dock during a hurricane. This is one of the worst things you can do. Floating docks always suffer casualties in storms, sometimes breaking free of their shackles, or losing their underdeck floats, or floating above the top of their pilings and coming free. At the very least, these docks will pitch and roll with the heavy seas and beat your boat to death.

Here are some of the approaches that are safer for storm prep.

• Leaving your boat on its lift cradle is not ideal, but it's not the worst idea in the world. If you are sure that you can raise the boat high enough so that it is not within reach of storm surge, it may be worth trying. Be sure to tie spring lines from the pilings to your boat, in case your vessel does come afloat, at least it will stay over the cradle and hopefully land gracefully on the cradle once the flood waters recede. Also tying some line from the cradle to the pilings is worthwhile to limit the cradle banging into the pilings.

• If your vessel makes its home in a mooring field, like typical sailboats, you have advantages. Hopefully you are in a mooring field that is well maintained and the balls and painter lines are in good condition. If not, try to find one nearby. Regardless, a backup anchor is recommended for a full category hurricane, even if it means carrying one out to distance in a launch or kayak and deploying from there. By distance we mean a "Scope" of at least 8 to 1. Secure the anchor to your tow eye, and you will be able to rest easy with a great backup system. Still, if you’re using a ten year old line that’s been exposed to sun and saltwater to secure to the mooring ball you are at risk. In our area, multiple sailboats end up breaking loose, and washed up onto the beach or a dock with every storm. This holds true even for the storms that were not a quite a category 1 hurricane.

What we do with our boats at ThePontoonCaptain: they stay in the water. In the water is where you can best safeguard and secure your boat. It is where a boat is meant to be.

• If you are at a marina that is well protected from choppy waters (some are not), you are best served by securing your boat in a wet slip. It’s very helpful when you can tie long lines from the pilings to your boat, as this allows for the most deflection and large swings in sea levels. Ideally, position your boat centered between all the pilings fore and aft. Tie crossed spring lines to the stern and crossed to the bow. Ideally your stern pilings are well behind the vessel, and there is also some distance to the pilings on the bow. (No, do not use dock cleats if you can avoid it.) The longer the lines are, the better the chance that your vessel will not be bound with wild swings in sea levels. In 2017, Hurricane Irma sucked all the water out of the Tampa Bay area and levels were almost 6 feet below the low tide level In St Petersburg. The sea bottom was exposed everywhere. Hours later, the storm surge was 9 feet above the high tide level, resulting in a water level swing of more than 18 feet. That’s an enormous swing that must be considered when tying up your boat. By the way, Bimini tops get removed completely, frame and all, and stored indoors.

There was a time when we were keeping two of our vessels at a marina that was very exposed to south winds and seas. We knew that our boats would not be able to safely ride out Hurricane Irma at this location. We relocated the boats to a quiet cove with moderately shallow water off the nearby bay. The boats were in 4 feet of low tide water, and we used two 13 lb Fluke anchors, each with 8 feet of 5/16 in chain. One anchor was tied to the bow, and the other on the stern. Each anchor line was 70 feet from boat to anchor (lots of scope). The stern anchor was tied to a floating bridle, tied between the tow eyes on the stern. The floating bridle would prevent the anchor line from getting tangled up with the lower units of the outboard motors (the floating bridle was made by string a line through the two eyes of a couple of fenders). The boats survived Hurricane Irma without a scratch. Our biggest problem, was getting the anchors unhooked, as it appeared they were buried 2 or 3 feet under as a result of the storm scrambling up the bay bottom.

A crucially important note about dock line management: At ThePontoonCaptain we have a completely different set of lines that we use only during a hurricane, and these replace the lines we use for normal daily charter operations. The regular operating lines are fine for tying up overnight, and even for normal storms, but they have many hours of use, and long exposure to the Florida sun and saltwater. They will not have the same breaking strength as when they were new. This is an important consideration as you make preparations for a hurricane. With a separate set of storm lines, that are 1/8 to 1/4in heavier than your normal lines, you will never have to worry about the integrity of your lines. After the hurricane, all of our storm lines are removed, and thrown into a soap-water bucket, rinsed, dried, and stored away indoors for the next storm. This is why we can trust the storm lines to not betray us when the chips are down during a hurricane. They will stay in a near new condition for years. I would bet good money that most of the sailboats that break loose during a storm are the result of lines that have been exposed to salt and sun for years and years.

Earlier we mentioned not to tie your boat to the cleats on the dock. This is to minimize the risk of a cleat or dock coming loose. It happens more than you would think. Always tie to the dock piling for a hurricane, and do not fasten your lines to your boat cleats. Those can be ripped out of your deck or gunwale. Tie the lines from the pilings to a tow eye if you can. Even if you use some of the cleats to tie your spring lines, your tow eye is better suited to withstand the high storm loads better than the cleats. Remember the more lines  you tie, the more you distribute and spread out shock loads. This will make the situation much more survivable for your boat. We have sometimes (in certain scenarios) had to tie a bridle to the stern, and again, use the tow eyes rather than cleats. You can make it a floating bridle by snaking the line through the end loops of 2 or 3 fenders, and then the bridle stays aloft behind the boat.

WHERE TO GO FROM HERE:

Get the right anchor for your boat - You need the right weight and type of anchor to match your vessel.