Meredith docks
 

Drove by today and it looks like a couple of the Meredith docks took a beating from the ice blowing in.
Looks like several broken posts and the ends are sagging down.

Well, maybe when they fix them, they can remove those silly vertical signs on the poles that get in the way of tieing up and chew up your lines.
http://www.lockwoodstudio.com/galler..._dock_sign.jpg

Actually if the picture is correct and your tying up around the sign then your not doing it right. You should always tie to the base of the post, this is the strongest point and puts the least amount of pressure on the post in rough conditions.
In this picture only the stern line is correctly tied the other two lines are not.

Yes and no... When you're tight to the piling like that and your cleats are high up, tying off to the base of the piling is going to allow for too much movement of the boat and probably a lot more banging around in a high traffic area. The up and down action of the boat is going to want to pull the line upwards, which in turn give it more room to move, causing more problems.

Yes, I'm sure with a good technique, you could secure the line to the base of the piling and it wouldn't move, but then you're still putting more undue stress on things. I'd be more concerned about the pilings if they were way undersized, or the vessel was extremely large. But for the boats that come into Meredith, the pilings are fine to tie off to at any point.