Mooring buoy and rafting up etiquette

Re: Re Raft up and damn them!

We were once in a raft of 14 boats in Dunmore East in very windy conditions. The wind was blowing from almost directly ahead. We were about 7 out and had shore lines but not too many others did. After about a day the inside boat, probably about a 34 footer, moved outside because he was suffering major crushing damage.

I still have a composite photograph of the raft ahead of us. It was also 13 or 14 deep, but the outside boat was an enormous Austrian-flagged aluminium catamaran. It was probably twice the length of some of the inner boats.
 
Re: Re Raft up and damn them!

I usually say something innocuous like - "I'll help you get your lines ashore if you like" - kind of an autosuggestion tactic which normally works without causing offense

Regards
JohnS

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Re: Re Raft up and damn them!

A lot of boats I know wouldnt have lines long enough or strong enough to go ashore on a 14 boat raft! Have you seen some of the warps people use, just about long enough to go to the pontoon and no more.
 
Re: Re Raft up and damn them!

Yes - I,ve noticed that too - I wondered whether it was the growth of marinas and visitor pontoons that has affected peoples thinking with the old customs of parking up in harbours becoming less popular. I'm probably talking rot as usual - but I've felt for a while that the old thngs defined under 'seamanship' for want of a better word are becoming a little muddied. People tying off on pontoons instead of the boat is my favourite hate - bloody great wodges of warp wrapped and wrapped in a massive impenetrable tangle - and always on top of yours so you have it all to undo before you can unhitch. Lines drum tight and no thought to putting bigger fenders at the bow and stern with narrower ones in the middle and then we have those piddly cleats which a lot of modern boats carry which wouldn't hold up your granny's knickers and certainly can't take any line bigger than around 8mm.
Doh!
JS

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Re: Equal rights=equal obligations

Ok then so you will not accept crying babies. And your suggestion what to do with them is what. If this is supposed to be the best reply yet then I give up. This is my last posting on this forum, hurray I hear you cry. Good bye and good riddance.
 
Re: Re Raft up and damn them!

I do like your analogys, "Grannies knickers" indeed! But I get your point, people never double up lines and tie off on the boat. I have some monstrous lines for harbours, in the bristol channel or irish sea you need them with 10 meter tides! I shouldnt need them in the med, apart from tieing off the stern in some of the calas' in the Bollyolics, but I use them for kedge warps and also long springs, my breast warps are 12 meters long! I must admit, though I can't resist cheap rope, I bought 200 meters of 20mm three starnd polyester in Spain last year, for just under a pound a meter! Did I need it.....Nah! but couldnt turn it down at that price!
 
Re: Equal rights=equal obligations

Surely not on the whole forum? Just this thread I hope, we need as many varied views as possible, it's what makes things happen, remember, debate.
 
Whhooooaaaa

Now come on lads - this has got silly and people are getting offended - I'm sorry about my initial remarks about now wanting children on the boat next to me. Its gone a lot further than that now - but there's no need for this to lead to resignations.
Lets call a draw to this right now
Regards
John S

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Re: Equal rights=equal obligations

Well, Kirky is of course right, you are miserable gits.

We often tie up alongside with our children on board. In fact they're much better behaved and less noisy than the great majority of adults, who have a nasty habit of returning from a bar at 2 o'clock in the morning. A special thanks to the neighbouring British boat in St. Vaast that sat up drinking beer and talking in the cockpit until 3 when we had a 6 o'clock start.

But if I were to tie up alongside someone who was rude too or about the children, I would probably encourage them to treat the neighbour with as little consideration as he treated them. They after all need training in how to deal with the miserable buggers of this world.
 
Re: Equal rights=equal obligations

Do you really think that and would encourage your children to be rude? I don't think so, you are too well behaved yourself. But drinking until three in the morning, well, they were obviously noisy drinkers, and thats not fair, but you expect everybody to be in bed by eleven because YOU have an early start? Because that kind of thing goes on all the time in the med and nobody complains, they may do the same themselves, often!
 
Re: Equal rights=equal obligations

I was just pointing out that it is usually better to have families alongside than unaccompanied adults. Families will probably be asleep, or at least very quiet much sooner than a boat full of beer drinking adults. The ones in St. Vaast weren't particularly loud, but any beery conversation in a still harbour or boots tramping across the deck when you're trying to get to sleep is going to be a pain. I don't mean that I would object to someone coming back quietly from the pub in the early hours of the morning, but I wouldn't object to children either, provided they didn't dance on my decks. Children are normally much quieter than adults at least at night, often during the day too.

If I felt that someone was being rude to my children, I would see that as something that would need to be dealt with. Preferably with the children's assistance. I think that it is part of their upbringing to be taught not to let them let people walk over them, and it would be great fun for them to be allowed to be naughty for a change, and satisfying for me.
 
Re: Equal rights=equal obligations

I tend to agree with you, I happen to have no children but do like reasonably well behaved ones, I say reasonably, as children are children and the laugh of kids at play has got to be one of lifes sounds, but a screaming and I mean SCREAMING child has got to be one of the worst sounds, babies crying is just one of those things, but I can understand somebody wanting peace and quiet aswell, its just a nmatter of considering others. as an aside to shopw what consideration some grown ups show, a woman who climbed over my newly varnished handrails, leaving her footprint in my toerail and handprints in my handrails, there was an open port two meters away, I was standing there with the varnish pot in my hand, I metioned this to her husband, on the boat, by the way they just came alongside and tied up, he said its an emergency, our mooring has sunk! I said well thats not an emergency is it, it's too late! He roundly abused me and said about the varnish, just put another coat on!!! Grrrrr. No kids involved! I cast his lines off and told him to go away, before I put a coat on him! Thats one of the problems of havong a big wooden boat, lots of people think its a pontoon extension.
 
In my early days of sailing I pulled along side a RAF training yacht No6 in a raft off Poole Town Quay one Bank Holiday weekend. I asked the crew on deck was it OK and got the all clear. Once the first lines were attached the Skipper appeared from below huffing and puffing about leaving at 0300 to go to France. Has now boats were being turned away by the harbour staff. I said that it would be no problem. In some state the skipper disppeared below. At 0300 we were up on deck waiting, they did not leave until 08.30.
That Autumn I attended a RYA theory course at a RAF base and yes guess who was the instructor! I remembered him but thankfully he dont remember me.
 
Re: Equal rights=equal obligations

Simon - your first paragraph is very sensible - the second one intrigues me!
Are you suggesting that when someone is rude about your children and you deck them, you then get the offspring to pee in their ears or something?
One of my daughters was getting her hair pulled at school when she was 6 - eventually we went in to try to sort it out without too much success and the hair pulling continued. I then said to her - "If this happens again, knee him in the gadooberries" She promptly did his the following morning and put a stop to the hair pulling. Perhaps political correctness prevents us from taking such direct action nowadays - my Wife went daft when she found out what I'd advocated which probably means it wasn't the best piece of advice I ever handed out!
Go on- what does the second para. mean??!!
regards
JohnS

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Re: Equal rights=equal obligations

Boody 'ell, John You cant go around saying things like that, "deck them and get the kids to pee in their ear" Or "knee them in the goolies", Kim's gonna kill us all when he gets back! Funny as it was IMHO.
 
Re: Equal rights=equal obligations

Your knee in the goolies is an excellent example of what I was thinking about, although I wasn't thinking about anything quite so directly physical.

Our children (age 6 and 4) are I think the best behaved and most considerate people that I have ever met. But I do believe that they should be encouraged to misbehave in the right circumstances. Otherwise they would be too goody-gum-shoes, which would be a bit nauseating, and they would be full of pent up repression. Someone being rude to them would be a perfect excuse to let them loose. The actual tactics used could be subject of a strategy planning meeting with the children.

Perhaps their karate classes would come in useful.
 
Re: Equal rights=equal obligations

I kmust be nice to other peoples kidsI must be nice to other peoples kids
I must be nice to other peoples kids
I muist he nice to toither peoples kids]
O ,ist bne nice tip othnr peoples kids
Muist be nice ti otmnther peoples kids
miu soitnbe nice top topmtnher poeples kidss
OK
Done the lines - Got the message
regards
Out!
JohnS

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Re: Equal rights=equal obligations

Agreed about the screaming kids. I saw one in a shop a couple fo days ago that had taken all the products of the shelves, had built a pathway of them and was walking along it. The mother was watching saying "now you really mustn't do that, that is very naughty". The kid looked at her with a look that said "of course it's bloody naughty, mum, are you stupid or something?".

I was on the point of saying to the mum, no that's not the way you do it, THIS is the way you do it, but luckily managed to stop myself my clenching my teeth, hands and whatever else.
 
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