Boating can be a Faff - Especially on a Swing mooring

[Bigplumbs]

As most on here know I have several boats, Most quite small by this forums standard. Earlier this year I put our Ranieri Revolution 4.55 (Bella) on My swing mooring. This was in a belief that this would be easier than trailer boating and launching and recovering it each time.

Yesterday me and her indoors went out on a perfect summers day and had a day on Bella from the swing mooring. On this occasion I accidently left the Hat camera running but this turned out to be very interesting as it illustrates in real time just how much faff is involved with keeping your boat on a swing mooring. This video is a little long but actually only shows about 1/3 rd of the faff as this does not cover the Tender of getting the cover etc back on again.

Even without all the seagull shite and growth on the boat. If you have space to store a boat on a trailer at home. Trailer boating is deffo the better way over a swing mooring. Where I live Dry stack just does not exist.

 

[Bigplumbs]

So later this month I will do some maintenance on the Trailer and make some space for Bella at Home

 

[jakew009]

Having been trailer based and then moved onto a swinging mooring this summer... I'd say a swinging mooring is 100000x better and there's no way I'd ever go back to trailer boating.

But it's fair to say your setup looks like a palava. I think you have to chose a suitable boat if you want to keep it on a swinging mooring. Ideally something that is fairly enclosed (pilot house is ideal) and that is setup for mooring (ie. massive mooring cleats at the bow you can drop your mooring ropes over).

I also think you want to have it really near your house so you can get there regularly. Mine is about 15 minutes away and I can go down almost every day it's nice weather.

My setup is

- park in yacht club car park
- get on little passenger ferry, 2 minute journey for 2 quid
- get on boat
- open lazarette hatch, open seacock
- unlock patio door
- put key in ignition, turn key, engine starts
- walk to bow, lift mooring lines off cleats and go

The whole process takes about 5 minutes from stepping out of car, and it's the same in reverse.

At low tide, I can almost touch my boat from the beach, but she stays afloat at virtually all states of tide




Can't do this on a trailer...

 

[Bigplumbs]

Having been trailer based and then moved onto a swinging mooring this summer... I'd say a swinging mooring is 100000x better and there's no way I'd ever go back to trailer boating.

But it's fair to say your setup looks like a palava. I think you have to chose a suitable boat if you want to keep it on a swinging mooring. Ideally something that is fairly enclosed (pilot house is ideal) and that is setup for mooring (ie. massive mooring cleats at the bow you can drop your mooring ropes over).

I also think you want to have it really near your house so you can get there regularly. Mine is about 15 minutes away and I can go down almost every day it's nice weather.

My setup is

- park in yacht club car park
- get on little passenger ferry, 2 minute journey for 2 quid
- get on boat
- open lazarette hatch, open seacock
- unlock patio door
- put key in ignition, turn key, engine starts
- walk to bow, lift mooring lines off cleats and go

The whole process takes about 5 minutes from stepping out of car, and it's the same in reverse.

At low tide, I can almost touch my boat from the beach, but she stays afloat at virtually all states of tide
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View attachment 162167

Can't do this on a trailer...
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I think you are correct in all you say. Also a very big difference as yours is quite a big boat to Trailer. Another very big factor is the amount of Seagull activity there is in your area. As you will have seen in the video there is loads of the little shitters that sit on many of the boats and there is always about 3 on mine. For us this is a big factor.

I will keep the swing mooring and will possibly move our Sealine S24 onto it in the future.

Cant really do much about the distance we live from the boat