Lassooing - do you, might you, or is it a sin?

What do you think about lassooing buoys?

  • Acceptable to me while I sort out a better method

    Votes: 24 15.2%

  • Acceptable sometimes for some buoys, while I sort myself out

    Votes: 38 24.1%

  • Rarely do it, but may if situation requires it

    Votes: 41 25.9%

  • Haven't done it, but may if the situation requires it

    Votes: 44 27.8%

  • Never / it's a sin / unseamanlike etc....

    Votes: 18 11.4%
  • Total voters
    158
Stemar said:
any mooring that can hold a small cruiser in a gale is highly unlikely to be damaged.
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When I moor to a buoy my boat is attached to the riser via heavy shackles and swivel. The connection may involve a steel rod through the centre of the buoy or the strop may be attached to the riser below the buoy. I would expect every component to be able to hold me in any conditions. The function of the buoy is to hold the riser at the surface so needs only to be capable of supporting say 20kg. Lassoing transfers the load through the soft part of the buoy so it's hardly surprising damage is often caused.

A supplementary question - if your home base is a swinging mooring, would you be happy for visitors to lasso it?
 
We no longer have a swinging buoy but if we did I wouldn't use a type of buoy that is damaged by lassoing, bearing in mind how widespread the practice is.
 
Lazy Kipper said:
We no longer have a swinging buoy but if we did I wouldn't use a type of buoy that is damaged by lassoing, bearing in mind how widespread the practice is.
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Precisely. I know that I am doing a service to the lazy mooring owners with £30 inflatables rather than £100 robust buoys. If I can get them to spend £30 and some hassle enough times each year they might learn to buy a seamanlike piece of equipment. Although I admit it sometimes takes a lot of reverse to get them to pop, and that's a waste of my diesel
 
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Lazy Kipper said:
We no longer have a swinging buoy but if we did I wouldn't use a type of buoy that is damaged by lassoing, bearing in mind how widespread the practice is.
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The only buoys that are probably immune from damage through lassooing are steel ones, and I'd rather not have a steel buoy scraping on my bow when you get wind over tide. And buoys are not cheap: I think the last one I bought was about £100. Nor was it fun having to go to the marina one night and pay as my previous buoy had disappeared completely - a rod through the body type - with a pickup buoy for the warps.
 
Is there something about lassoing, which is more damaging to mooring buoys than poking around with a boat-hook?

Given discussion here in the past, regarding the doubtful handiness of patented telescopic eye-hooking gadgets for use from the foredeck, wouldn't it be a boon to be able to lasso?
 
dancrane said:
Is there something about lassoing, which is more damaging to mooring buoys than poking around with a boat-hook?
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Yes. You can't hook the round rubber body of an inflatable buoy - and even if you did, you can't apply any more force than your arms are capable of holding.

Putting a rope round the neck of a rubber buoy and then hanging the boat off it applies a potentially large load to a part that was never designed to carry any load at all.

Foam-filled fibreglass buoys are apparently susceptible to a similar though less dramatic failure - rather than a large rip and instant deflation they get small cracks and over time the foam becomes waterlogged.

Pete
 
LadyInBed said:
Another thought, how the hell does the owner pick it up without lassoing it?
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Some moorings have a riser chain holding the buoy in place, and then you moor to the buoy (via an attached pendant, a top ring, or whatever). Others when in use have a single chain running from the boat's cleat down to the sinker or ground chain - more like a permanently installed anchor. In the latter case, the buoy is merely to hold either the chain, or a pickup rope running down to the chain, up at the surface where you can grab it. So the way the owner picks up the mooring is to hook the rope or chain underneath the buoy with a boathook.

Pete
 
prv said:
Putting a rope round the neck of a rubber buoy and then hanging the boat off it applies a potentially large load to a part that was never designed to carry any load at all.
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I see. But having neatly lassoed a buoy, wouldn't it be normal practice to haul it aboard and make the cable fast to the boat in the same manner as its usual owner/user would?
 
dancrane said:
I see. But having neatly lassoed a buoy, wouldn't it be normal practice to haul it aboard and make the cable fast to the boat in the same manner as its usual owner/user would?
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Seriously, this is the bit of the debate where there seems to be the biggest misunderstanding. Many bouys simply cannot be lifted from the water at all, and indeed have a chain loop or ring under the bouy (or sometimes conveniently on top of the bouy) which you thread a line through, then hang to the line, or two if you are being cautious. So any boathook has to hold the boat, often with no ability to reach down to the loop with your rope if the ring is on top of the boat, and absolutely no way of looping it through if the loop is in the water under the bouy. So that part always has to be done by dinghy or swimming, which means it's ideal to have a temporary attachment to the mooring (lassoing in my case) whilst the dinghy is run along the side of the boat. I do not tootle off into the sunset thinking the mooring owner has created a puzzle too difficult for me to solve. He hasn't as the lassoo will work almost every time. The only lassoo-proof mooring I've found in the last decade were a set of visitors bouys which were shaped like sharp-ended barrels about 3 foot long and were attached to the mooring weight by a rope at each end.

If there is a pickup bouy that holds up a piece of rope then getting that by boathook is a doddle provided you have learnt how to manouvre your boat, and that sort you can haul on deck to get to the main attachment. I don't know why anyone would struggle with that kind provided the rope is strong enough to hold the boat for a very short time if a gust comes up whilst you are hauling it up. I have had them snap many years ago in Margate harbour, with just a 24 boat.
 
I'd think more of the survey if it had an option of "never, ever on inflatable bouys out of respect for the owner's gear".

I've not read once in these various threads any one of the pro-lassoing brigade, our instructor friend included, say "the first thing I do is take a picture/note down the number/get a position, so if I cock it up and sink it I have some details so I can do the right thing". Quelle surprise. Funny how no one approached my club when my buoy was torn away.

On a previous thread someone assumed that because I don't want my mooring lassoed (and I do have a pick up buoy but some people think it's still ok to lassoo and then pick it up later) I'd be in with the "no mooring alongside" crowd. *******s. If you want to use my mooring in the right size boat with a boat hook feel free. If you want to come alongside with some decent fenders and proper warps ditto. Conversely if you want to lassoo my buoy, you can't, and the same goes if you hail me to come alongside with 3 half deflated 80 grit sandpaper fenders and some 3mm racing cat gut mooring warps.

Why have we got pages and pages on this? As many people on these threads who are presumably picking up moorings don't even understand why it can be a problem and how buoy construction differs, surely there's a message in there?
 
jordanbasset said:
Link to what the RYA says here about picking up a buoy, all seems fairly reasonable to me
http://www.rya.org.uk/cruising/handling-sail/Pages/Asktheexpertsbasicmanouvering.aspx
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I'm actually surprised that it doesn't have more caveats about lassooing possibly causing damage, and being a last resort, and to avoid applying too much load (for example keeping the engine in gear against a strong tide). Instead they present it as a perfectly valid primary technique - pickup buoy if present, otherwise always lassoo, and hang back on it as hard as you like as long as you secure to the ring eventually.

If I owned a mooring with a PVC buoy I would be pretty angry with them for promoting that.

Pete
 
LadyInBed said:
Another thought, how the hell does the owner pick it up without lassoing it?
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There are two possibilities.
One the pickup has been removed because the owner does not want the buoy used. E.g the mooring is due maintenance.
Two, there is a pickup, but the cowboys prefer not to use it.

In my case the problem was almost exclusively sailing schools picking on my buoy for practice.
Probably because being a nice, new, clean Polyform, it wouldn't mark their topsides when the beginners made a complete haddock of the job.
Hence my willingness to put some tyre marks along their topsides with the workboat.
 
lw395 said:
There are two possibilities.
One the pickup has been removed because the owner does not want the buoy used. E.g the mooring is due maintenance.
Two, there is a pickup, but the cowboys prefer not to use it.

In my case the problem was almost exclusively sailing schools picking on my buoy for practice.
Probably because being a nice, new, clean Polyform, it wouldn't mark their topsides when the beginners made a complete haddock of the job.
Hence my willingness to put some tyre marks along their topsides with the workboat.
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Wasnt it an unfendered workboat that you threatened me with? So you gouged the grp on my topsides?
 
One has to smile to these posting , putting the lasso issues to one side just for a min ,
Why would anyone who have spend a great deal of money getting a mooring laid ,and value his mooring , would then go a put an blow up doll on the end of it? Which is prone to get damage is someone motored over it or sails over it , let along getting pinched on a anchor or bow roller or stabbed by one of them fancy metal boat hooks , then having the cost of sending a dive down to finding it .
The argument that owners don't want a strong plastic buoy banging on there boat , don't really stack up , you just design the mooring so the buoy can be kept on board ,
I had an mooring on the river Orwell , I have not used it for the last five years but I still pay the fees and every 12 months to have if checked over , it has a pick up line it have private use with care and the size of the boat , I have owned that mooring since 1990 , in the summer it used hundreds of time , not only local but French , Dutch, Germany . People come from all over to sail to pin mill , I have no dough that mooring has been picked up with ever method you can think off and a lot more .I have had to changed the mooing line a few time over the years because of wear , where it been cleated and where it rubbed on fair leads , also had to replace the pick up line because it been motored over and cut with an rope cutter , but that's a risk we all take ,my buoy as never been replace or lost or damage , it still got the same one that was put on when the mooring was laid . I valve that mooring one day I will want to use it again , so I do every thing in my power as a responsible mooring owner to make sure the mooring is not only safe to use but easy to pick up.

Let take this one stage further , if people where honest , this has nothing to do with how to pick an mooring or what with , it about some private mooring holders who are happy to go and use other people mooring but don't want any one to use their mooring , well the facts are unless you never move your boat or sink your mooring ever time you leave , there a chance it going to be used , people have been using other people mooring a lot longer then you or I have had ours , it a way of life .

www.bluewatersIlorcroatia.webs.com
 
sailaboutvic said:
Let take this one stage further , if people where honest , this has nothing to do with how to pick an mooring or what with , it about some private mooring holders who are happy to go and use other people mooring but don't want any one to use their mooring , well the facts are unless you never move your boat or sink your mooring ever time you leave , there a chance it going to be used , people have been using other people mooring a lot longer then you or I have had ours , it a way of life .

www.bluewatersIlorcroatia.webs.com
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Eh? How do you draw that conclusion? If that means what I think you mean, it's not the case. The vast majority of mooring owners, who have responded here, have said that they don't mind their moorings being used, if used responsibly.

For the avoidance of doubt, "responsibly", in this context, includes being sure that the mooring is suitable in size and space to accommodate your boat, not using it in any way that might cause damage to the mooring, or nearby boats, and being willing and able to drop the mooring immediately if requested by the owner.

If someone is unwilling or unable to comply with these simple requirements, then they should go elsewhere. There's nothing complicated about it.
 
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