Is being Snubbed a good thing

[Guest]

About 30 years ago at the pictures, I remember seeing a Rolls Royce car going over rough ground with the cabin staying where it was and the wheels bouncing up and down. At the time, I was a proud owner of a Ford Popular with 6 volt electrics, cable drum brakes, side valve engine with ludicrous wipers that worked off the manifold and went slower the faster you went.

Thank God I survied all that and we all now enjoy the wonderful cars of today.

As I sat on my boat over the weekend watching my own and other boats snubbing and jerking I wonder why our advancement in mooring technology has moved forward by zero. Boats still leave their moorings, tenders leave mother boats in blows despite having good gear. Even pushbikes now get decent suspension.

Although chain and rope does absorb some punishment surely, by now, someone could come up with a decent simple device to take the worst out of bad weather ?

 

[Guest]

Well, of course, they have, Vic..

Rubber snubbers are pretty popular items these days. And someone makes one with a couple of compression springs inside it. And people were sliding weights down the chain a hundred years ago. But I don't think anyone's actually got to the Rolls Royce standard yet.

 

[Guest]

Method 1. (Free) Double up lines, make one slightly longer than the other so it doesn't take up until the first has stretched.

Method 2. (Cheaper than those rubber or spring devices sold for the job) Take a cheap small fender for each line. Thread the mooring line through each eye. For a bit of extra spring, wrap one revolution between one end and t'other.

Caveat in both cases, and regarding the dinghy issue. Tie proper knots!

 

[gus]

Re: Well, of course, they have, Vic..

I'm sure someone will have thought of having hydraulic dampeners on their mooring cleats, but the best is always the simplest. Just stick a weight on the line and let gravity do the work for you!

 

[Guest]

The Rolls Royce of Anchoring

I admit it was a large commercial ship(?) about 30m x 40m, self propelled with lots of deck structures, cranes, hydraulics, - I'm not sure what it did.

Anyway, it came past us while we were at anchor and headed into water about 6 feet deep. It stopped and then raised four long spuds with hydraulic lifters. The spuds were hydraulic driven by gears on teeth along their length and all four started to push the spuds down until the whole craft lifted out of the water by about 6 feet.

No rocking, no snubbing, no water or tide load, no growth, no barnacles - seems to me like the perfect anchor.

 

[Guest]

Save your money....

Rubber snubbers are good and I don't knock 'em .... but refuse to pay the price !
My 1/4 ton cup boat is moored med'i style, bow to the dock, stern out on buoy ..... The two mooring lines to the dock are 'snubbed / pinched together by large bungee, so that as the boat surges the bungee stretches and allows the two lines to move apart .....
This principle can be applied quite easily to any mooring line by fixing bungee at a point different to the mooring point and passing other end over the line, causing it to deviate from a straight line back to the boat. Boat moves, line straightens - snubbing the surge.
Finally the old method of the weight hung of the line / anchor rode is still the best and above all else works. You only need a bucket full of ------ slipped down the line, stopped off by a light line at the point you want.