Eye splices in mooring warps.

[Kukri]

As I was chucking the particularly disgusting green and slimy mooring warps into the washing machine*, I noticed that several have signs of chafe and resolved to cut the bad bits out and have more shorter ones. They were far too long anyway.

This being so I can either whip the new ends or make eye splices.

Is it the done thing to have soft eye splices in mooring warps?

*Ten year old Miele. ?

 

[PaulRainbow]

As I was chucking the particularly disgusting green and slimy mooring warps into the washing machine, I noticed that several have signs of chafe and resolved to cut the bad bits out and have more shorter ones. They were far too long anyway.

This being so I can either whip the new ends or make eye splices.

Is it the done thing to have soft eye splices in mooring warps?

Matter of personal choice i'd say. I like to have them on my mooring lines.

 

[Poignard]

I agree it's a personal choice. I don't have eye splices in my lines. If I want an eye for any reason I just tie a bowline in the end.

 

[Kukri]

Thanks.

 

[westernman]

Is it the done thing to have soft eye splices in mooring warps?

Yes. That is what I have on mine.

 

[Kukri]

One thing I have to do for sure is to add some chafe protection!

 

[westernman]

One thing I have to do for sure is to add some chafe protection!

I have old fire-engine hose for that. I scrounged about 15metres from my local fire-station.
They wanted assuring that I was not considering actually putting water through it.

 

[Spirit (of Glenans)]

The customary way to moor with warps is to put the loop on the shoreside cleat and belay the other end on the onboard cleat. The dictum is; "One line for each job", so that you can adjust them without leaving the boat, and not clogging up the shoreside cleats with unnecessary turns of rope means that others can also use them if need be.
How you make the loop in the end of the warp is your own business, but it's obviously much more convenient to have them already spliced in, and a splice does not weaken the rope as much as a knot.

 

[Poignard]

Many French marina catways have cleats with no horns or often no cleats at all at the outer end; just a horizontal steel U-shaped tube. So there is no need for an eye in the line.

 

[Ammonite]

I'm not a fan. Sooner or later the eye will get caught on something when slipping the line if the wrong end is let go either by accident or an inexperienced crew member

 

[alan_d]

If you were to look back over previous discussions of this matter in the forum you would find approximately equal numbers (with variable vehemence) for and against spliced eyes. I reckon that means it is your choice.

 

[dolabriform]

My permanent lines have eye splices through a piece of hosepipe that stay looped around the pontoon cleat.

 

[Roberto]

Many French marina catways have cleats with no horns or often no cleats at all at the outer end; just a horizontal steel U-shaped tube. So there is no need for an eye in the line.

+1
Also, if one wanders single/shorthanded in places with unknown types of cleats, or unknown position/location, an eye can possibly be useful once in a while, but is usually a nuisance. The mooring rope length has to be set often very quickly by the person having stepped on the pontoon, too short a rope and the eye prevents from making a suitable stop on a normal cleat, too long a rope and the eye is useless; put in the odd hornless ring cleat and eyes become basically useless 99% of the time.
For general mooring in places where I have no direct knowledge of their cleat arrangements, possibly 99% of cases when one sails further from the usual sailing area, no way.

 

[thinwater]

Seizings (not whipping) are MUCH weaker than splices in nylon, because the rope becomes skinny when it stretches and the seizings become loose. I've done the testing. A knot is stronger and more chafe resistant.

Don't worry too much about expert "rules." Practices vary geographically, so just follow local custom. They all work.

 

[mikegunn]

As I was chucking the particularly disgusting green and slimy mooring warps into the washing machine*, I noticed that several have signs of chafe and resolved to cut the bad bits out and have more shorter ones. They were far too long anyway.

This being so I can either whip the new ends or make eye splices.

Is it the done thing to have soft eye splices in mooring warps?

*Ten year old Miele. ?

Personally, i find that a soft eye in one end of a mooring line is useful. Either looped over a shore bollard or on a deck cleat. It's often convenient to quickly drop the loop over a deck cleat before heaving the line ashore. Particularly when mooring plans have to be changed at the last minute. Saves fiddling around tying knots under pressure. Putting a soft eye into old three strand rope is easy, but if you're considering doing it in old braid on braid, good luck. I've never succeeded.
Mike.

 

[PaulRainbow]

It defies logic that one or two people here think you take the end of the warp with the loop ashore to drop on a cleat.

You put the loop on a deck cleat, step ashore and tie the other end to a pontoon cleat. If it isn't a cleat, it's no different to having a line without a loop, you just have a plain line to deal with. Once the boat is secure you can properly organise your lines, i tend to keep the loop on deck cleats for the fore and aft breast lines, past them around or through whatever devices are on the pontoon and then tie the other end back to the deck cleat. The deck cleat isn't jammed full of line and it's easy to slip the lines when you want to depart, and no, you don't slip the end with the loop, that's stupid, in fact you'd pretty much have to be deliberately stupid, you untie the plain end of rope, leaving the eye on the cleat and slip it, why would anyone untie the plain end and then take the loop off of the cleat and let it go ?

My home berth has two cleats on the finger and i have three on the boat, it's all well and good the likes of Cunliffe waffling on about one cleat one line, one line one job bollox, that doesn't seem to work too well in the real World. I secure the breast lines as above, then i put the loop of a long line on the cleat at the end of the finger, bring it back and make it fast to the midships cleat, then back to the cleat on the other end of the pontoon. When i want to leave i take the spring line off and i can easily slip the breast lines from onboard.

 

[Kukri]

Putting a soft eye into old three strand rope is easy, but if you're considering doing it in old braid on braid, good luck. I've never succeeded.

Seizings (not whipping) are MUCH weaker than splices in nylon, because the rope becomes skinny when it stretches and the seizings become loose. I've done the testing. A knot is stronger and more chafe resistant.

Takes me back…

Almost forty years ago the newly promoted Mate of one of my then employer’s VLCCs, in dry dock in Dubai, quietly asked me, “The Bosun says you can’t splice nylon tails after they’ve been used. Is he right?”

“Yes!” I said.

Big Dave retired as Fleet Manager the year before last, after saying that my deck cadet son showed promise.

From an earlier stage in life I remember the nylon parts of deep sea tugs’ towlines being always made up double with a very long short splice, if you take my meaning, in the middle of one side, with the two thimbles seized in and each leg seized to each side of the thimble. These were huge three strand nylon ropes, 4 and 5 inches diameter.

The whole towing connection, starting from the tug, was made up of the tug’s winch wire, which could be up to a kilometre, the double nylon spring, around 30 metres, the leader, around 100 metres, the towing chain, to take the chafe in the casualty’s Panama fairlead, and finally a number of wire tails made up onto the casualty’s bitts, or, if the tug’s Master had reason to doubt these (and sometimes they just flew off!) round deck-houses or even round the accommodation block.

I was in Bugsier’s office in Hamburg when Captain K-G Meyer took a phone call from the Master of the 20,000 bhp tug “Arctic”, newly fitted with Kort nozzles, reporting on his bollard pull test in Cuxhaven: “Do you want the good news or the bad news?”

“The good news!”

“We got over 200 tons.”*

“And the bad news?”

“It’s a pity about the quay wall…”

To be a tug’s Bosun in a fleet like Smit or Bugsier in the Seventies, you had to be pretty good.

* This was a “magic number” for the incredibly remunerative work of towing out the big concrete offshore oil platforms, which was why the Kort nozzles had been fitted.

 

[Spirit (of Glenans)]

Many French marina catways have cleats with no horns or often no cleats at all at the outer end; just a horizontal steel U-shaped tube. So there is no need for an eye in the line.

You can always cowhitch the eye of the warp onto the ring?

 

[Ammonite]

It defies logic that one or two people here think you take the end of the warp with the loop ashore to drop on a cleat.

You put the loop on a deck cleat, step ashore and tie the other end to a pontoon cleat. If it isn't a cleat, it's no different to having a line without a loop, you just have a plain line to deal with. Once the boat is secure you can properly organise your lines, i tend to keep the loop on deck cleats for the fore and aft breast lines, past them around or through whatever devices are on the pontoon and then tie the other end back to the deck cleat. The deck cleat isn't jammed full of line and it's easy to slip the lines when you want to depart, and no, you don't slip the end with the loop, that's stupid, in fact you'd pretty much have to be deliberately stupid, you untie the plain end of rope, leaving the eye on the cleat and slip it, why would anyone untie the plain end and then take the loop off of the cleat and let it go ?

My home berth has two cleats on the finger and i have three on the boat, it's all well and good the likes of Cunliffe waffling on about one cleat one line, one line one job bollox, that doesn't seem to work too well in the real World. I secure the breast lines as above, then i put the loop of a long line on the cleat at the end of the finger, bring it back and make it fast to the midships cleat, then back to the cleat on the other end of the pontoon. When i want to leave i take the spring line off and i can easily slip the breast lines from onboard.

That's exactly how I would use a line with a loop i.e. attached to the cleat on the boat not the pontoon however if the plain end fouls on the pontoon as you are springing off in testing conditions (it happens) you can't remove the loop from the boat in a hurry. If you use an OXO you can dump the line, recover the situation and come back and collect the line at your leisure. I do use lines with loops as you describe at other times if it makes life easier (when mooring up but without the looping the line back to the boat bit) but mainly because I happen to have some!

 

[LONG_KEELER]

I generally prefer an eye splice . Means you only get spaghetti at one end rather than both.

Being a single hander, I prefer the eye made on the boat cleats . I can then release the ropes from the pontoon and jump on. The order I release them depends on the wind and tide. My current berth is like an extended hammer head so I can head of in both directions. Interesting hearing how others do it.