Mooring Buoys - How to Find / Best Practice - Can I just use any?

[PaulRainbow]

Great if you don't have a centre cockpit ketch

Bring the buoy alongside and attach the line.

 

[Sea Change]

And if the lowest point of the deck is still too high, as on the Moody 31? I could use the sugar scoop on my Mk 2, but the Mk 1 doesn't have a sugar scoop!

Transom ladder?
There are a whole load of reasons why it should be easy to reach or climb down to sea level on a boat. Picking up a mooring is only one of them.

 

[Aja]

Getting into the dinghy whilst the boat drifts around some moorings unmanned in anything but benign conditions would be pause for thought.

Quite clear in the post I was replying to with the image of the training boat that there is crew.

It would severely restrict choice if all moorings were of a similar type. Time to give yourself sea room and break out the anchor

 

[MontyMariner]

Transom ladder?
There are a whole load of reasons why it should be easy to reach or climb down to sea level on a boat. Picking up a mooring is only one of them.

As I understand you, you are recommending reversing up to the buoy, neutralising the engine, climb out of the cockpit, walk to stern, pick up boat painter, grip it in my teeth, climb down stern ladder and if the buoy hasn't drifted off, attach painter to buoy with one hand.
Even when I was young and fit I wouldn't attempt that solo and think twice about it if crewed up.
Now I'm in my seventies I would love to think that it could be contemplated

 

[NormanS]

As I understand you, you are recommending reversing up to the buoy, neutralising the engine, climb out of the cockpit, walk to stern, pick up boat painter, grip it in my teeth, climb down stern ladder and if the buoy hasn't drifted off, attach painter to buoy with one hand.
Even when I was young and fit I wouldn't attempt that solo and think twice about it if crewed up.
Now I'm in my seventies I would love to think that it could be contemplated

Here's a wee hint for you. Have a suitable length of line conveniently to hand. Make one end fast, then all you have to do is pass the other end through the eye on the buoy. If you can't manage that, then anchor, or take up gardening instead.

 

[Mark-1]

Here's a wee hint for you. Have a suitable length of line conveniently to hand. Make one end fast, then all you have to do is pass the other end through the eye on the buoy. If you can't manage that, then anchor, or take up gardening instead.

I used to do that but with a carbina hook on the end.

As soon as I felt that click 100% of my attention could go on sorting the boat; dropping the main whatever.

Doesn't help if you can't reach the bouy but my freeboard is tiny.

Not sure why I stopped using it.

I remember contraptions like boat hooks that helped put a line round bouy shackles on charters in Scotland. Don't recall using them but I bet they work.

 

[MontyMariner]

Select a mooring you feel you can cope with.
If you are a marina dweller, practice makes perfect but please don't blame the mooring owner when things don't work out the way you had hoped.

Select a mooring you feel you can cope with. - Exactly, it would be foolish not to.
If you are a marina dweller - Never have been, I've been on mooring buoys for the best part of 50 years. Currently fore and aft riverside buoys.
please don't blame the mooring owner - Nowhere in this thread, or for that matter ever have I blamed the mooring owner!

 

[Laysula]

Many years ago my friends father had a flying fifteen in Falmouth. Instead of a pickup buoy he had a danbuoy. It was a simple matter to sail up to it, reach out and grab it and let the sheets go. Easy then to walk up the front and secure it.

 

[MontyMariner]

Here's a wee hint for you. Have a suitable length of line conveniently to hand. Make one end fast, then all you have to do is pass the other end through the eye on the buoy. If you can't manage that, then anchor, or take up gardening instead.

I certainly have suitable length of line conveniently to hand, but between hand and body my arm length can't reach most mooring buoys.
As I said previously, my preferred pickup device is a wishbone style on a pole.