Leaving A trot

[nrcoyle]

Hi all,

Looking for some advice, I am currently moored on a line of fore and aft trot moorings on a river. They are close to a bank so there is not enough room to leave on one side of the trot. Coupled with this the prevailing wind is usually pushing us towards the bank, i.e. across our trot link line, tide runs at up to 2knots in this section of river.

I am usually ok leaving the trot on a flood tide as I let the front lines go allow the boat to lie to the wind and then reverse off dropping the stern mooring warp once we are clear of the buoy. However, I have not come up with a reliable strategy for leaving on the ebb, as it is difficult to get the nose through the wind the drive off forward and if I use my normal strategy I am usually in danger of falling back onto the rear mooring with the tide before I have a chance to motor clear of it in reverse.

Anyone else have a similar mooring and strategies to cope?

 

[[3889]]

Would motoring hard ahead whilst still secured astern on the offshore quarter with the wheel turned away from the bank, not bring the bow into/through the wind? Same principal as springing off a pontoon but without the pontoon to mess things up.

 

[LadyInBed]

I have the same problem on the R Frome, Wareham.
When I'm blown on I lay a kedge anchor on rope and 3mtrs of chain across the river and run it back to the genoa winch through a turning block.
When the river is clear of traffic I gently winch in to get the anchor to dig in, then release bow or stern (depending on on ebb or flood of river) and winch the bow / stern out. Clear the other mooring lines, motor out into river, pull the kedge rope to the bow of the boat and pull in and lift the anchor.
It's easier if there is a second person onboard!

 

[lw395]

Can you not use the current to turn the boat?
Take both bow and stern lines to either bow or stern so the boat pivots about that point. Use the current and maybe a little engine to turn the boat until the current takes the keel sidewise.

 

[nrcoyle]

Thanks for the suggestions.

@Quiddle, I thought about your solution and it sounds like a nice controlled approach. However, the difficulty I see with this is my link line is on the bank side and i usually bring the two sides of the rear bridle together on the bank side to attache to the marrying line before leaving. Using this technique I would have to leave the offshore part of the bridle free which would be a pain for me on my return and may be a problem for the boat on the trot behind when the stream has it trailling down towards him.

@LadyinBed, this sounds very much like the best reliable seamanslike approach, I may have to resort to this on extreme conditions, but would prefer if i could come up with something as effective which is not such a faff.

@lw395 current setup has my 30ft boat in a 40ft gap so have around 6ft mooring lines and a 30ft light floating marrying line with floats to connect them when I am away. Not sure with this setup it would be possible to do as you suggest, also space is an issue for this as due to the wind the boat will want to turn into the bank and there is not enough room to get it round before it will hit the bank.

My best idea at the moment is quiddles approach but with a temporary slip line on the offshore stern cleat so i can leave my mooring setup properly and slip and retrieve the sponging line when the process is complete. Or shortening the bow mooring line so that I cannot get to the boat in front and motoring forward against it using rudder and propwalk to get the sterm out clear of the mooring.

Any other suggestions or flaws in my suggestion above would be appreciated.

 

[LadyInBed]

Would motoring hard ahead whilst still secured astern on the offshore quarter with the wheel turned away from the bank, not bring the bow into/through the wind? Same principal as springing off a pontoon but without the pontoon to mess things up.

but will probably run you up the backside of your neighbour ahead!

 

[RobinBirch]

I'm broadly with lw395 Use the current to swing the bow across the river and turn her.

Take a line ashore at about midships to pull the stern in and cleat off. drop the aft mooring line, then take the forward mooring lines to the bank side of the boat and the bow will start to move out across the river. The weight of water going by the hull/keel should easily overcome the wind. Let go forward, continue the turn and then release aft, bit of motor and you're away
I used a trot for some 11 years with this set up. I got rid of a floating line between the buoys and took the mooring lines back to the bank on the breast lines.

My other suggestion would be to see/ask how other skippers are getting on/off the trots.

 

[Iliade]

Do you have enough room alongside to transfer the bow or stern line as appropriate to a breast cleat, helm over thereby allowing her to rotate in situ, and then motor straight out?

 

[oldmanofthehills]

That is almost exactly my situation for my Somerset Axe mooring and in my 3 boats over about 30 years I have hit bank shallows perhaps six times and had to wait for more tide or punt off before proceeding and have fouled my mooring lines perhaps 4 times times, once recently by trying to leave too near half tide when only 1.5m depth (compared to 6m at full). Leaving on the ebb is harder and I would never leave much after 1 hour after HW

We always moor bows upstream with a split trot so it can be unclipped moved to the up wind side. We almost always let go stern first and let her weathercock into the wind then go off forward. None of the boats was that responsive or steerable going astern.

However even with westerly winds blowing strongly across the marshes and pushing us up the bank, we have found that letting go of the stern lets the bow mooring ease and move back midstream so the rudder just clears the bank shallows and off we go. At worse if a flood tide and we are too keen the rudder touches putty and we wait another 20 minutes for it to lift, though obviously that it not suitable for ebb.

Obviously it depends on mooring geometry. Does the OP really not have more than 10 or 15 metres between trots and shallow water?

Is the water so shallow inside the trots that proceeding inside is not practical? This would be a two person job as bows and stern must be let go together, unless midpoint cleat was used.

On one F6 day we got a line to an outer trot and pulled bows to that - needed about 50m of line, and Im not sure why we thought it a good day to go to Cardiff

SAPurdies suggestion also works.