How Do I Lay a Mooring?

[Dreamers]

Have been offered the chance of sinking my own swinging mooring - at vastly reduced cost. However, although I understand the principle of dumping something very heavy in water then tying boat onto it, the mechanics of exactly how you go about doing this are new to me.

At the moment my preference is to coat a certain bank manager in several layers of cement and then chuck him over the side attached to twice the rise of chain, but suspect rules about polluting rivers with noxious and abhorent substances will floor this plan. Second choice, and far less fun, appears to be fill tractor tyre with concrete and heave that in, based on fact the idea that flat side will be sucked to river floor and therefore stay where I leave it.

How on earth do I get it into the river - place in dingy, row fast, go down with ship - No. There must be a trick to this, and I don't want it on my teak decks so that rules out dropping it from my boat. Advice gratefully received.

 

[jamesjermain]

The tyre and concrete will be extremely heavy. You really need the co-operation of your local friendly moorings manager and his mooring barge. Cast sinker close to low water mark then float barge over weight when there is sufficient water.

Motor tyre out to site. Drop.

If your boat is sufficiently shallow draughted you could use her for the job by slinging the wight under her keel, but do take care of ropes and props.

When we used to do this job for our lifting keel Sonata, we would motor over the sinker, pick up the lifting lines, tie them off short to the primary winches then wait for the tide to lift all off the bottom. If we miss-judged things we could still use the winches to get the weight off the bottom, but it was almost more than the winches (winchers) could manage.

Obviously you must attach the riser before the tide comes in as well as the marker buoy. Do insert swivels at top and bottom of the riser and that ensure all shackles are well and truly moused, siezed, rivetted over, welded, whatever, cos sure as eggs, the pin will come undone if you don't.

JJ

 

[Jules]

Don't use concrete, it almost floats. Best is railway wheel £60 or big old engine block or suchlike cheap from scrapyard, 2" chain as riser. Quite feasible for a boat to float it from bow on rising tide and rig up a quick release system to drop it when in place. Stand well back!!!

 

[Starspinner]

Certainly think of iron instead of concrete, 5cwt of concrete will only weigh 3cwt in water, but 5 cwt of iron will weigh 4.5cwt in water.

 

[LadyInBed]

Options depend on the type of sinker you use and if there is a favourable beach near to where you want to drop the sinker.
- If it's an engine block (de-oiled) or other irregular shape then you might have to ask a local fishing boat to take it out from a quay and drop it for you. The problem with this type of sinker is that, over a period of time, the ground chain can get itself wrapped around the sinker as the wind / tide swings the boat.
- If the sinker is circular and the beach is favourable you can roll it to the LW mark and onto a suitably padded deflated inflatable. Pump up inflatable, tow out into position, deflate one tube - plop!
- A variation on this is to roll / drag sinker as far into the water as possible at LW. Then rope it to the underside of an inflatable so the inflatable is acting like a lifting bag.

If you use a method that allows the sinker to drop uncontrolled, it would be prudent to get a local scooby-doo to go down and have a look see and tell you how the sinker is laying, as it could be fouling the ground chain.
If you know said diver, you could drop the sinker with just a rope and buoy attached, then get the scooby to attach the ground chain in situe (which you gently lower to him/her)

 

[longjohnsilver]

Surely you mean 2" for groundchain. Even that is pretty heavy duty stuff, half inch should be plenty big enough for riser. 2" would probably sink the mooring buoy!

 

[Shanty]

Just a thought - is a weight going to be sufficient to do the job? They tend to need a sheltered location & a soft bottom to work effectively. Check what other boats of a similar size moored in the vicinity use. You may find that, like us, they use anchors rather than weights.

 

[ToMo]

Do you ever get one of those days when the glaringly obvious is irresistable?...I'm having one now!
Give the job to a chicken!

 

[Ohdrat]

I would advise using the type of anchor the fish farms use for their cages.. substantial permanent mooring anchors and not overly expensive.. some have det norske veritas accreditation

 

[Rabbie]

My friend on the Irish west coast has just laid his tractor tyre/concrete mooring. He tells me he lashed 2 large plastic barrels to the thing on the shore. When it was afloat he towed it out to the site then simply cut the lashings and down she went a treat.