fuzzy or steel ??

Going off the title of the thread....

Silk ties work well too and don't leave the marks that handcuffs might .
Just saying

neck ties to all four corners... they don't leave marks on her!

Whip it, whip it real good

These look good. I wonder how abrasion or puncture resistant they are, in case the dock has a rough area on it?

While reading your post the first thing that came to mind was the Whips as well,
However if yyou really want to step it up put this under your boat!
If I had a dock it is what I would do here in MN!
http://www.airdock.com/

This is something we used to do in Maine where we had tiny floating docks and huge tides. Its called a "pull off line". You anchor a float far enough away from your dock (we used big concrete blocks). On one end of your float you attach a large bull nose ring (6" around hoop). Then you loop a line through it and back to your dock. Tie boat to line (we had loops in the pull off line every so many feet) and pull your boat toward the float and away from dock and tie off. When needed just pull it back to the dock. Basically it is a boat clothesline.

http://www.hopballs.com/adult-hop-ba...-ages-13-plus/ enough said.......

I'm glad you like the post title, I was hoping it would attract attention :-)

About:

Whips - doesn't UV and weather destroy these making them very brittle?

Airdocks - I had looked at these, they are not exactly cheap. I also need to back my boat into my dock space and it looks like you need to drive forward onto these so your outdrive does not shred them

Inflatable dock bumper - I would be concerned these would get smashed/pushed under the dock. If I could sew, I'd go buy some PVC pond liner and roll it into a tube & seal it w/ PVC cement/weld. Here I could make them as "thick/wide" as I desired.

Pull-off line - I would be concerned the anchor would break free, The lake is soft bottom and I think big winds would break it free.

HopBalls - I actually thought about this :-) Is this a serious recommendation? Conceptually it is like those big round fenders, correct?

Another option I am pursuing is to see if I can get the dock owner to let me put a 8ft piece of docking running parallel to the stern of the boat. Doubtful I can, but it is worth the ask.

For now, sounds like the answer is fuzzy handcuffs and silk ties? I can probably get a dozen models to product demonstrate for less than some of these other solutions :-)

Thank-you all for these responses, I need to go back and think about all of these.