At the top is a Wichard pole with a bracket ûattached and a Wichard snap hook cocked in ûthe bracket. In the middle, neither mounted ûnor equipped with a mooring line: Suncor’s ûbracket and hook. At the bottom, Kong’s hook ûhas grooves ground in both the small end of ûthe hook and the gate that engage lips on ûthe bracket to hold the hook open until the ûbracket is withdrawn.

A boat hook functions, essentially, as an extension of your arm, enabling you to grab objects that otherwise would be out of your reach. Some boat hook attachments connect the equivalent of a hand to the arm extension, simplifying some of the fussier, more intricate jobs, such as threading a line through a loop or eye.

Approaching your own mooring or dock can give you a nice “home-again” feeling because you’ve rigged and attached the lines to make the task easy. Docking or picking up a mooring in a strange harbor is altogether different, especially if the mooring has no line to fish up with a boat pole. The same goes…