Do you aim for the fenders to contact the pontoon as you park?

[dunedin]

We've always moored as taught on competant crew course many years ago. Step over the guard rail as you approach holding a mooring line, wait until close to pontoon then STEP down and tie off upwind/tide first followed by downwind. I've always assumed this was the RYA approved method and its always worked for us.

As you would expect from an RYA course, that method is perfectly acceptable for many situations.
BUT due to the economics of running training courses these boats tend to be stuffed full of extra crew.

By contrast, where and when I sail, the majority of boats seem to be sailed short handed - either a couple or singlehanded. Plus as noted earlier, many boats these days have high freeboard.
It is worth practicing the techniques listed above which don’t require anybody to step off onto the pontoon. Sometime you may find yourself needing to moor up singlehanded, or with a crew who is not up to going ashore with ropes. It is a useful skill to add to the toolkit.

 

[Daydream believer]

I think you mean that YOU cannot get YOUR foot fully in - others can and have used them very successfully for about 8 seasons so far.

Did I mention YOUR foot? I said that "I" hated them. I did not suggest that "YOU" hated them. The point of the post was to highlight an issue. A friend of mine dumped his for the same reason. So it is not just me. So anyone reading my post & thinking about buying one might think to themselves- "Hmm, might just check on that first" ---before their foot slips out & their kneecap gets dislocated on the corner edge of the gunwale as they fall screaming into the oggin

 

[Refueler]

Nobody with any sense would have put them in that position.

Well someone did !!

 

[Poignard]

Well someone did !!

Someone with no sense!!!

 

[johnalison]

I have three means of getting up / down ...

A kitchen folding step ... folds down flat / small enough to go in a small locker ...

A Lazilas folding ladder with large round deck hooks - all in nylon. It has stand-offs to make sure its well off from hull to get feet on it securely.

An alloy / plastic step 5 rung ladder with keeper plates to fit deck .. the vertical alloys turn inward to make it flat ... I have it velcro'd to guardlines midships.

We carry a step to put on the pontoon, but neither this nor a rigid ladder are any use when approaching a berth. There are many ways of achieving a painless berthing, but the use of a bystander is the one method guaranteed to lead to disaster.

 

[dunedin]

Did I mention YOUR foot? I said that "I" hated them. I did not suggest that "YOU" hated them. The point of the post was to highlight an issue. A friend of mine dumped his for the same reason. So it is not just me. So anyone reading my post & thinking about buying one might think to themselves- "Hmm, might just check on that first" ---before their foot slips out & their kneecap gets dislocated on the corner edge of the gunwale as they fall screaming into the oggin

Your words were "one cannot get one's foot fully into the fender. Only the toes. So one always feels one is going to slip out".
I was gently mocking your language, and the implied generalisation beyond what the sentence would mean if you had more correctly used "I" & "my" rather than "one"

 

[Chiara’s slave]

We carry a step to put on the pontoon, but neither this nor a rigid ladder are any use when approaching a berth. There are many ways of achieving a painless berthing, but the use of a bystander is the one method guaranteed to lead to disaster.

Only if the bystander is wearing marina staff uniform is it ok to hand them a line.

 

[Alicatt]

Nobody with any sense would have put them in that position.

The original bollards are still there... in the hedge. I was looking at them today
They are a bit of a pain and you have to be really careful around them, but it is what it is and not much that can be done at the moment, the bollards are pile driven into the bank, the side there slopes up to about where the bollards are.

One of the original bollards under the club sign, there are many more like this in the hedge along the quay side, they were put in when the canal ( Kanaal naar Beverlo ) was built in 1854 by the military to transport ammunition to the barraks at Leopoldsburg, though Leopldsburg was called Beverlo back then.

 

[Poignard]

The original bollards are still there... in the hedge. I was looking at them today
They are a bit of a pain and you have to be really careful around them, but it is what it is and not much that can be done at the moment, the bollards are pile driven into the bank, the side there slopes up to about where the bollards are.

One of the original bollards under the club sign, there are many more like this in the hedge along the quay side, they were put in when the canal ( Kanaal naar Beverlo ) was built in 1854 by the military to transport ammunition to the barraks at Leopoldsburg, though Leopldsburg was called Beverlo back then.
View attachment 170640

I looked it up on the internet and, bollards apart, it looks like a nice place to keep a boat.

 

[Daydream believer]

Someone with no sense!!!

Has it occurred to you that the bollards may be taken down to a part of the bank for strength & not actually relying on the pontoon. If they were relying only on the pontoon then the pontoon would be taking the weight of the boat during flood water. It may - for reasons that we do not know- have been a factor.
I reckon the bloke who put them in must have been the same bloke who puts charging points in marinas in line with ones bow anchor at finger pontoons. That is so you can knock them over when berthing, like the car freaks do to the bollards in the street

 

[Daydream believer]

We've always moored as taught on competant crew course many years ago. Step over the guard rail as you approach holding a mooring line, wait until close to pontoon then STEP down and tie off upwind/tide first followed by downwind. I've always assumed this was the RYA approved method and its always worked for us.

Stepping over a guard rail without the shroud as additional support is not always a good thing. The rail is usually quite low & it upsets the centre of ballance of one's body. If one starts to tip backwards the guard rail is too low to help one recover. That is why it is better to be next to the shroud.

 

[Stemar]

the same bloke who puts charging points in marinas in line with ones bow anchor at finger pontoons. That is so you can knock them over when berthing, like the car freaks do to the bollards in the street

And carefully makes them of a height that means they are hidden by the bow of the boat or the bonnet of the car as you close in on them.

 

[Alicatt]

I looked it up on the internet and, bollards apart, it looks like a nice place to keep a boat.

View attachment 170641

Yeah it is a lovely place, the bridge from where this picture is taken was the one I crossed 2 years ago and spotted the boats tied up and thought it looked very nice and that I should go and investigate, there are a few hundred meters of mooring along there, with a couple of visitors berths too. The terrasse is one of the local hotels The Waterkant (Waterside) and where my wife and I sat and discussed about buying Casper, the food there is VERY good, an hour later we had done the deal to buy Casper. Half way between the last boat and the road bridge further down there is an overspill into a brook, the canal is raised about 3m above the ground, there are no lock gates on it just a rising bridge at a local factory, the one downside of the canal is that it weeds up very badly and in places for my boat it's two steps forward and one back to get along to clear the weed off the skeg and saildrive

The Club is full, and is only because I have a small boat that I can fit in between two berths that I managed to get into the club. At the end of the canal is the basin at Leopoldsburg with a large yacht haven and club, it is just too busy for us plus it's not really a town we go to a lot.
HOMEPAGE Yachtclub De Blauwe reiger

Has it occurred to you that the bollards may be taken down to a part of the bank for strength & not actually relying on the pontoon. If they were relying only on the pontoon then the pontoon would be taking the weight of the boat during flood water. It may - for reasons that we do not know- have been a factor.
I reckon the bloke who put them in must have been the same bloke who puts charging points in marinas in line with ones bow anchor at finger pontoons. That is so you can knock them over when berthing, like the car freaks do to the bollards in the street

Exactly this, they are piledriven into the bank as is the walkway, it is not a floating structure so not a pontoon, it is about 1 to 1.5m deep at the edge of the walkway and the canal is 3m deep in the middle.

 

[Poignard]

Has it occurred to you that the bollards may be taken down to a part of the bank for strength & not actually relying on the pontoon. (...)

It did not occur to me. I was remiss.
Sorry!

 

[johnalison]

Only if the bystander is wearing marina staff uniform is it ok to hand them a line.

They are the worst! They will take your line and then pull like mad on it to get it to a cleat, make it fast with an incomprehensible knot and then look at you in amazement wondering why your stern is hanging out into the fairway.

 

[Daydream believer]

It did not occur to me. I was remiss.
Sorry!

You were right though.
It is still a stupid design-- unless they wanted a hurdling team training track
They could have had bollards to hold the pontoon & cleats on the edge of the pontoon to hold the boats. Then most boat owners would have used the cleats. The odd owner would have used a bollard so that at night someone would not have realised there was just the one & gone a over t

 

[Poignard]

Bertholders have to use wheelbarrows to move their gear around!

 

[rogerthebodger]

You were right though.
It is still a stupid design-- unless they wanted a hurdling team training track
They could have had bollards to hold the pontoon & cleats on the edge of the pontoon to hold the boats. Then most boat owners would have used the cleats. The odd owner would have used a bollard so that at night someone would not have realised there was just the one & gone a over t

Its more than just a stupid design its a positively dangerous design and any mooring owner places his mooring line across any walk way should be banned from the mooring IMHO

Power leads and water hoses from a mains outlet or walk on tap also have a similar issue unless positioned to prevent anuone tripping over the hosseof power lead

 

[rogerthebodger]

Bertholders have to use wheelbarrows to move their gear around!

My Current marina do not have any wheelbarrows of trollies' to move any heavy equipment I have my own folding sack truck purchased from SBS several years ago but keep it in the car otherwise it will get borrowed and not returned just like shopping trollies

 

[Alicatt]

Bertholders have to use wheelbarrows to move their gear around!

Access to the walkway is through locked gates like the one just in front of my wheel barrow

it was Autumn clean up day