Money for old rope??

capnsensible

capnsensible

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Why do some people use their old sheets and halyards to tie their boats up? These ropes are clearly designed to be as non-stretch as possible.

Mooring lines are supposed to be stretchy so as not to damage your deck fittings and jerk the boat about all over the place.

It occurs to me that the money must be for repairing the broken bits!!
 
capnsensible said:
Why do some people use their old sheets and halyards to tie their boats up? These ropes are clearly designed to be as non-stretch as possible.

Mooring lines are supposed to be stretchy so as not to damage your deck fittings and jerk the boat about all over the place.

It occurs to me that the money must be for repairing the broken bits!!
Click to expand...

We use ours to initially moor up as they are much easier for Mrs FC to handle and get round a cleat quickly. We then replace them with the rubber snubbed 16mm 3 Ply lines at our leisure.
 
Ok I'll bite:
We don't moor along side in any serious way very often. Either were just there for the afternoon or its fine weather, so stretch doesn't really matter. Nor is it worth paying out for warps ,when we've got old sheets to use. Basically, for our purposes, it doesn't matter.
Matt
 
It's called recycling & is good for the planet :D

A lot depends on the mooring location. I use old climbing rope for situations where snatch may be a problem, but a lot of the time when I am aboard I am moored to a sheltered quayside with with a 15' tidal range. Consequently I use long springs plus bow & stern lines to accomodate the tide range. Snatch isn't really an issue then. Old halliards & sheets would be perfectly suitable then.

Different matter on the visitors berth of Holyhead marina tho' as it is actually outside the Marina & the harbour is plagued with a 5' tsunami whenever the HSS Cat goes in & out of its nearby berth. The usual short marina warps would cause serious damage in that situation.

Go down any canal & you will find canal boats "lashed" to their mooring spikes with several loops of polyprop (nice & cheap but stretchy) with all the stretch removed by multiple cross braced lashings.

Horses for courses innit?
 
You can take a horse to water, but a pencil must be lead!

There are an awful lot of boats in marinas all over the place and I think thats where the potential damage is. We live in a marina and the surge over the past couple of days makes the boat dance about like a weebil on acid. And thats with a lot of doubled up lines and big metal spring snubbers. Wandering around the pontoons, though, I see a lot of expensive boats tied up with old lines and wonder about the unecessary strain imposed. Not just seen here, but many, if not most, other marinas too.

In a storm last year, a couple of boats here got damaged by fittings getting wrenched beyond limits.

Its choosing the right rope for the right job, isn't it? No one uses their old mooring lines for sheets!!!!!
 
Ahh, well, there's yer problem innit? You LIVE in a marina No wonder you have problems. Not enough room to swing a catamaran is there? That's the whole issue with marinas. They are simply boat parks. The key objective is to pack as many boats as possible into as small a space as possible. The warps have to be very short & therefore there must be snatching if there is any wave action at all.

Move to a Quayside in an old harbour, or a jetty up a river, or a nice quiet mudberth in a saltings somewhere. You'll not get any snatching there. You'll not get any intrusive power, fuel or water taps either - and be in a much nicer place too, with loads o' wildlife (animal rather than racing crews). And have the interesting exercise of climbing ladders, carrying muddy dinghies etc etc to keep you fit & able bodied.

And who says nobody uses old warps for sheets? I've seen old polyprop sheets & halliards on some boats run on a budget. You don't get out much do you? Boats in marinas are completely at one end of the scale, there is a whole gamut of life out there down to kids in leaky borrowed dinghies.
 
My lad and a mate had a good time in Tayvallich bay in an old bath with a lump of poystyrene strapped to each side, they used bailer band for a painter.

I have used old sheets because they were there. I started using to overlong laid ropes because they were there and supposed to be better for mooring. I have bought some pretty sexy 10mm octoplat because it was very shiny and soft and actually quite cuddly. When I stop stroking it I'm going to have to cut it to suitable lengths and spoil it by using it.

Maybe next year, the existing stuff works perfectly well.
 
capnsensible said:
Why do some people use their old sheets and halyards to tie their boats up? These ropes are clearly designed to be as non-stretch as possible.

Mooring lines are supposed to be stretchy so as not to damage your deck fittings and jerk the boat about all over the place.

It occurs to me that the money must be for repairing the broken bits!!
Click to expand...

Because most folks don't know the difference between the various rope available. I know of a club member who bought a load of cheap braid on braid as mooring line as it was nicer to handle than the grotty polyprop he was previously using! A shame as his new 'mooring' line was excellent for the sheets! You can't beat stretchy nylon in my book for mooring warps. Always try to educate as maybe we will all learn and have a better experience. As a p.s my friend saw the light but not untill he had a cleat nearly ripped out!
 
Hiya Searush, thanks for the tips! I can promise I will certainly getting out more next year!!

Well, spent plenty of time at anchor or on mooring buoys, thousands of nights in marinas, a few nights on town quays, a couple in mangroves but only one in saltings.

Thing is, I like marinas, one of the reasons I've not owned a house or a telly for 12 years and just the occasional car. That's quite greeny, I suppose, on reflection.

Anyhow, I like to think that wherever I am, I have done my best to secure my yacht to the best of my ability and have used the correct tools for the job. Having discovered quite a bit of that the hard way, maybe discussions like this may help others to avoid some of the knocks!

I have also found that fishing boat crews are fond users of quays, that they keep strange hours and not that keen to share with their fellow travellers on the mighty oceans. They have, however, enabled my ability to curse become more multi-lingual.

Cheers!
 
capnsensible said:
Why do some people use their old sheets and halyards to tie their boats up? These ropes are clearly designed to be as non-stretch as possible.
Click to expand...

Not quite as clear cut as it would seem. Many cruising boats use nylon braided line as sheets and this line has the same stretch as line sold extensively as mooring warps - so recycling it as mooring warps isn't the disaster you might think. Nylon double braid has about 7% stretch at 15% of its breaking strength, whereas three strand nylon is very stretchy at 16%.
On the other hand, polyester braid and the high tech braids to which, I assume, you are referrring have very low stretch - 1% or 2%. These lines are used as halyards and as sheets on racing boats and where money is no object. Useless as mooring warps.
Also, oversize nylon mooring warps can be as bad as low stretch braided warps because their maximum stretch occurs at loads that will never be realised.
 
Fellow club member some years past bought a new Sadler 34 and tied it to his mooring in our creek with blue polyprop! And not thick either.

Moind you same man even removed the toilet roills when he sold the boat. And he was neither Scots nor Yorkshire - just a small shopkeeper.
 
On a light note -
Money for old rope – an expression which we all know means a monetary gain for doing very little. When sailors were short on money they would get together some old ropes and sell them for cash. Not exactly hard work for them!

Also try this

Have you heard of ‘nail one’s colours to the mast’. This is not such a well used expression but it means showing determination, make your objective known. The flags on ships used to be known as colours and during a battle the enemy would try to remove the flag to show victory. By nailing the flags to the mast made it much harder for the opponent to grab hold of them and this showed a determination for the ship not to surrender to their rival.
 
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