Heavy-duty marine deck hardware including bollards and cleats on an aluminum deck
Design

Deck Hardware That Earns Its Place

DesignBy Engineering Team10.22.254 min read

The glamorous parts of a boat are the hull and the helm. The parts that get a crew home are the bollards, cleats, rails, and fendering they grab, tie to, and slam against a dock all day. On a working boat, deck hardware is not an afterthought — it is structure, and we design it that way.

§ 01

Loaded harder than anything else

A bollard taking the shock of a loaded boat surging against a dock line sees some of the highest point loads anywhere on the vessel. A cleat is trusted with the whole boat in a blow. Fendering absorbs impact after impact for years. These fittings live a brutal life, and undersizing any of them is how a routine docking becomes an emergency.

The working deck of an aluminum vessel
Hardware backed into the structure, not just bolted to the plate.
§ 02

Backed into the structure

We never simply bolt a heavy fitting to deck plate and hope. Each one is backed by framing or a doubler that spreads its load into the hull's structure, so a shock to a cleat is carried by the whole boat rather than tearing at a few inches of plate. The fitting and the structure beneath it are designed as one piece.

Crews trust deck hardware with their hands and the whole boat with their lines. We build it to deserve that trust.
— Engineering Team, Breaux's Bay Craft
Filed under DesignWritten by Engineering Team
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