Dr. Shrink TideMinders - Set of 9 Black Balls

I need to by some more once my other pilings are installed. Line rides up and down piling without chafing. Great product. Might use a stopper knot or something to keep balls tight next to each other. Eitherway extremely happy with them.

We moor our 47' sailboat in a creek with 8' tides and can't tie directly to pilings. The TideMinders, as shipped and installed per the instructions, did not work at all with my boat on my dock. They tended to bind on the pilings as the tide changed and dragged the bow down before jumping loose, especially with a constant load and no wave action to periodically release tension. However, with some simple and cheap modifications, they work perfectly. First, install a spreader bar to hold the lines leading from the balls to the boat at the same width as the piling. This keeps the lines from pulling the balls tght against the piling under load. I used a treated 2x2 about 18" long, with holes spaced at 15" to pass the lines. On top of the spreader I mounted a 15" section of 2" PVC pipe, capped at each end to act as a float. This floats the balls, lines, and spreader up on rising tides, and provides some weight to drop everything on a falling tide. Prior to these mods, the TideMinders constantly bound up, and after the mods thay never bound up. It's simple, inexpensive, quick, effective, and preferable to extremely expensive stainless steel sliders.

I have use tide minders before and needed another set. They came.

I recently purchased two sets (9 balls each) of Tideminders for fore and aft mooring to pilings. The issue we were having was that our gunnels are very high and the cleats on our boat are 5' and 6' respectively, above the level of the cleats on the dock, so the "pull" was more vertical than horizontal. The Tideminders alleviated that issue well, only necessitating cleaning the pilings of large amounts of marine growth to allow the balls to roll well.The main issue I ran into is that 9 balls/piling IS NOT SUFFICIENT to prevent chaffing of the mooring line against the piling in the vicinity of the figure 8 knots. I had to purchase a third set of Tideminder balls in order to adequately protect the mooring line from rubbing against the pilings.9 balls may well work with really small pilings, but I ended up using up using 13 and 14 balls respectively to adequately protect two mooring lines used on two pilings. The sets should be sold in a MINIMUM quantity of 12 balls for the smallest of pilings I can find in my area. Other than that, I have been pleased with my purchase.

We were preparing for hurricane Matthew in a well protected marina but we were more concerned with storm surge. The piling system was high enough but the tie offs had to ride up and down with the surge of 5 to 10 ft. The only way to do that was to let the tie offs ride up and down the pilings. A simple bowline around the piling didn't work, the line caught on the rough wood. The Tide Minders were a perfect solution. They have good heft and pull on the line and also provide a rolling action to enable the tie off to freely travel the vertical distance on the piling. They are made of solid, dense plastic with a hole in the middle for the line. They come shipped 9 to a box which was plenty for a piling. You have to add your own line.

These floating balls are the answer for mooring to pilings There can be problems when the piles are too covered with marine growth, as this may cause to tideminder balls to get stuck below the surface as the tide rises. Some maintenance of both the piling and the Tideminders is necessary from time to time. I am happy to say that Dr. Shrink takes care of its customers. After I had a small problem with the product I contacted the Amazon retailer who told me that they would not help as the product was out of it's warrantee period (though under a year old). Dr. Shrink was terrific. They fixed my problem at no cost and I was back in business in time to make sure that my boat is well moored as hurricane Darien approaches. Good product and good people,

These tide minders were the best $55 (x3) I ever spent. I could only put them on one side of my boat because the other side had a dock attached to the pilings. I used 3 sets on 2 pilings so I could have more roller balls since my pilings are thick. They worked just as good or better than my neighbors $429 (x4 plus installation costs) tide slides. My boat survived a 4 day Noreaster storm with 60mph wind gusts and huge swells/waves where my boat was docked at the mouth of the bay where my canal starts. The boat was being violently moved back and forth, but the tide minders did an amazing rolling up and down with the swells. I have had them for almost 6 months and would recommend them to anyone.

A number of boats on our dock use these and they work well. Getting them set up for use takes some trial and error to get it right. We needed two sets for each bow line to work on the pilings.