BOSTON (WHDH) -- Coastal New Englanders are heeding warnings from the National Weather Service and taking their boats out of the water ahead of Hurricane Sandy’s arrival.

Boat owners in Swampscott took advantage of high tide Thursday night and pulled their boats out of the water.

"The harbormaster called the people that still had their boat in the water and said, 'We'd like it out before the weekend starts,' so we're here doing it. We don't have a lot of time," said Austin Sweazy,

“Take the traps in, get the boat out again. You don’t want to take any chances,” said Joe Paragy, a fisherman.

Mariners in Rockport Harbor spent Thursday preparing for the storm. Fishermen say they know the storm’s arrival is several days away, but they are keeping tabs on its track.

“This morning, I took the no wake buoy up for the harbormasters so it wouldn’t get damaged in the storm and I just put up a couple extra lines because we probably will get a good surge out of that. Even if the storm does take a spaghetti and go to the east, they’re still going to leave us a spell,” said Captain Bill Lee, a fisherman. “The storm of ’78 the No Name storm, we can go back to talk about a lot of different storms on the New England coast. We can talk about a lot of lives and a lot of property lost .”

“I’m just grateful we have all of our docks and boats out of the water ahead of time -- it’s great,” said Ron Petoff, Sandy Bay Yacht Club. “We have a hurricane policy in place here at the club which we had to implement last year with Irene…and it worked really well, but we considered that like our practice run.”

Rockport Harbor is a protected area so mariners aren’t too concerned about heavy damage.