Boat poles can be called upon to perform ûheavy-duty work. We used a telescoping pole ûwith boathook while working this winter on ûthe moorings of our bottom paint barge.

Articles are often born from a frustrating experience or two on the water—like the time we overshot our mooring and used a (fully extended) boat pole with hook to drag the boat back to the buoy. The pulling force was too much for the pole, which bent and had to be trashed because it couldn’t slide back into its outer sheath.

We’ve already tested boathooks (December 2000), so we decided to delve into a rapidly growing subsection of the boathook world—the telescoping multi-purpose boat pole. Hyped as space-saving tools that can accept everything from a hook to various cleaning apparatus (squeegees, mops and Scotch Brite-type pads) to a paddle—or even fishing…