long strop wrapping round mooring question

Marceline

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In your original post you appeared concerned about the length of the strop when you left the dinghy attached. Within reason, a good length of painter to the dinghy makes picking up the mooring much easier if you just snare yourself gently between the two and sort yourself out at leisure. Especially with smaller, lighter boats that are more prone to be blown off by errant gusts.
Obviously don't have it so long as to impede other traffic
thanks and will try this with the painter (y) I'll make it short enough not to be an imposition but long enough to get pickup etc
 

Marceline

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Just a comment ... I look at various boats and you see that design does not really lend itself to swinging moorings. many have lost the strong samson post / bollard mooring on foredeck to get a more flush area.
Many now relying as here - on smaller cleats.

I always liked to have 3 strops .... not one big fat diameter strop. First went to main mooring post on foredeck. That carried the usual load. Second went to a cleat or other strong point and would share load if first was 'slightly' stretched. Third was 'insurance line' which I usually made to the mast tabernacle with tiny bit of slack ...

The three were lightly held together outside of the boats bow by light cord - so picking up was simple affair of hooking up the longer #3 strop ..

Why ? My Alacrity with single strop to an oak samson post broke free years before and ended up on Farlington marshes ....

I never used an eye in a strop .... that way I could always let go even when under strain. Using smaller diameter lines (total of the 3 exceeded size of single ... ) meant that making fast was easy - needed no 'keeper lashings' as OP shows ...

Just commenting ... many other ways to moor as well ....
cheers so much - lots of really helpful info there (y)

I liked your idea of multiple strops and then bundling them together. Think if/when we get a shorter strop I'll keep the long red one as tbh it does seem to take me a while to lash it down (though I'm sure I'll get a bit faster once I've done it a few times)
 

Marceline

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It may be that your long strop unwound itself from the mooring and now the mooring has adopted all those turns. It may also be that your mooring has a swivel at the seabed (or near seabed) and the turns have all been accommodated by the swivel.

Your dinghy might not have the windage nor resistance to tide and simply wound itself round the mooring pennant. Your yacht has greater resistance and the tension in the pennant slowly released the turns and or allowed the torque to turn the swivel.

Unless you describe your mooring design - we are all guessing - which is of no use to you - its just confuses. Is your mooring chain, chain and rope, swivel, no swivel etc etc?

Jonathan
thanks Neeves and lots of info there (I never knew there were many different types of mooring !) (y)

I'll check with our Harbour Master, but it looks like the mooring is on a chain, and I had attached a heavy duty swivel and shackles at the top (I'm unsure if there's swivels below the water - will check)

I'll try the suggested 'drop the long strop into the dinghy' this weekend and see how it goes
 

Refueler

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On the subject of swivels ... its not unusual for people to fit a swivel and then it has no use .. its too deep and basically spends most of its life sitting in the mud / on bottom ... only rising off bottom in strong weather etc.

Just commenting.
 

neil_s

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I find that chain strops are really unkind to the boat - they snatch badly in a wind over tide. You might find that in rougher conditions you need a longer strop - 4m might still be too much, though. Why not try tying your dinghy to the mooring buoy and just lay the strop in the dinghy - that will stop it getting tangled up, keep it dry and you can reach it with your boathook to pick it up?
 

Marceline

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thanks Neil - that's good to know (y)

we were going to try the suggestion of dropping the strop into the dinghy and tying it up to the mooring with the painter (hopefully goes well this weekend) - and think we'll get a shorter strop and have it bundled with the longer one and use the red longer strop as a backup.

good info to know might still need some length though for rougher conditions - maybe I'll order a 2m/2.5m and just put it onto the bow cleat/lash it down over the bow roller, and have the red one using the two cleats furher back/lash them down as as backup
 

jdc

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By coincidence I just made up a new strop, shown below. It's 3m long (I used 4m of rope but I put two splices in it) and is 28mm diameter 8-plait 'Polysteel', bought from Boat Gear Direct. It's way over the top for the OP's needs, being for a 42' boat weighing >13T, and presumably with a higher bow fairlead. So a 2.5 metre strop sounds about right for him.

I don't like having more than one line as I doubt the safety advantage. The breaking strain of this strop is 13,540 kg so it's going to fail by chafe it fails, and two thinner lines would chafe more quickly than a great fat rope, so I think the benefit of a back-up is illusory.

FWIW we tie the dinghy painter to the loop, but I have a fairly short painter (3 - 4m?).
strop.jpg
 
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