Mooring Buoys

[Shaddickp]

I wish to lay my own mooring buoy for a 14ft dayboat. Can anyone offer any practical advice on the best way to do this. Cost is a pretty important factor. The mooring will be in fairly sheltered water which dries out, maximum depth is around 7 meters.

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[Jools_of_Top_Cat]

The usual for a tidal mooring is to lay two anchors spread by about 40 to 50ft heavy chain, and from the centre a riser chain on a swivel. A recent thread showed many variations due to location, ie. to have the legs at 90° to the prevailing current / weather, or to have them in line.

Best bet in all reality is to find someone who also moors in that location and ask them, most mooring methods have grown from trial and error in each particular location. You will also have to make sure you mooring does not interfere with other boats and channels, local advice has to be best!

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[William_H]

Hello Shaddickp I am a compulsive DIY and if you have a drying mooring location it is a piece of cake. Mine is in 3 metres of water with no tidal variation to speak of so work has to be done with SCUBA or holding my breath.
You need chain, lots of really heavy stuff, preferably second hand and at least half inch in diameter of the steel in the links. Don't worry about rust, however reject the chain if it is significantly worn where one link presses on the next. Even then its the material left that maters not how much is worn. This is what you must check frequently when the boat is on the mooring. Ultimately a chain and or shackles will wear right through and the boat depart. Here a half inch chain in the riser is good for 2 maybe 3 years before it needs to be replaced.
You need enough chain to run from your buoy to the bottom on the highest tide and wave height but no more. This is connected by a swivel skackle to lengths of chain going out to anchors. (at ground zero) Two anchors will suffice however 3 or 4 or more are better. 3or4 will positively locate the centre of the mooring regardless of tide flow or wind and will mean very little movement of the chains . These chains can be more worn or lighter because any failure will only mean the displacement of the boat until the remaining chains take up the load. The chain and anchor in the expected direction of greatest load should get the better hardware. The anchor chains need to be sufficiently long that the boat can not settle on the anchors which could damage the hull unless you have steel bilge keels. In your case then the anchors need to be more than 7 metres away from ground zero unless the boat is ok to settle on the anchor. The chain can consist in part of short pieces of steel bar, railway line or girder shackled together. The more weight near ground zero the less the movement near the anchors and the less wear.
The anchors can be ordinary boat anchors of any type however you can manufacture your own as you don't need a stock or second fluke. So an L shaped piece of heavy steel bent to about 80 degrees with a hole for a shackle which is driven into the mud will do fine. A stock attached will add to the weight and stabilize it if you are concerned. Even a stake driven deep into the mud will work well if it is deep enough.
Around my mooring area there is a lifetime's worth of old engine blocks and railway wheels. If you have anything like this in a distance you can reach with a chain then use that. Take the chain around a large part and shackle the chain onto itself. You could use someone elses mooring with their permission for one leg if you have enough chain.
All shackles need to be iron not stainless steel (unless you use stainless chain) and if it is unavoidable connecting stainless to iron use as large as possible iron shackle and keep an eye on it as dissimilar metals wear much more quickly. Shackles need to be moused ie after tightening the screw use wire to ensure the screw cannot turn in the loosening direction. I use fencing wire. It does rust away but usually by then the shackle is so rusty it will not turn.
From the buoy I use heavy polypropelene rope to the mooring cleat. The propelene gives some stretch and spring effect. I am obliged to use a large buoy supplied by the local authority however I prefer to have a smaller buoy which can be lifted onto the deck because it doesn't get weed growing on it.. In this case your riser can be about 4 metres of chain to the swivel shackle to the poly rope up to a loop onto you bow cleat with the buoy attached to the top loop by a light rope. You will find the rope will last longer than the chain and I havn't figured out why we use chain except for the weight. Incidently some advocate 2 swivel shackles. They are necessary because the boat can rotate through 360 degrees many times and twist the chain until it is shortened lifting the mooring. When inspecting make sure they can turn freely and they also wear out after a year or 2 so buy the biggest you can get.
It's all very logical and any text on anchoring will lead you to an understanding of the need for weight near ground zero to ensure pull on the anchors is horizontal. The additional weight of the other anchar chains ensures this and means you don't need the large length to depth ratio. If the riser chain and rope is too long you will find the boat swinging in a larger circle endangering other boats etc. so keep it short. Start hunting the junk yards. Good luck ole will.
One last tip. my boat has an eye to attach a winch on a trailer, half way up the prow close to the water line. I attach a snap shackle to this to the mooring so there is no place for chafing and it minimises the chances of another boat drifting onto the mooring line and chafing through. This line is in addition to and shorter than the mooring line to the bow cleat which is the one used on departure and arrival.

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[ted]

I used to lay my own mooring in the river Mersey at Tranmere. I would put the anchor and everything in my dingy when there was a couple of feet of water. You bury one anchor in the mud then push the dingy along with chain paying out from the dingy. When you come to the end of the chain you bury the other anchor in the mud.

You need to do a careful calculation to work out the length of chain required.

For a 14 foot dayboat a light chain might suffice so you could have the chain lying on the sea bed with a longish rope attached.You have a float of some sort so that you can pull the chain up from the sea bed. If you have a larger boat and a lot of chain then this arrangement would be too heavy and a proper mooring buoy would be required.

You need to consider the type of bottom(sea bed that is) since some anchors are unsuitable for certain types of bottom. I have a couple of 200 pound anchors but they would only be suitable for a muddy bottom and would not hold in sand.

On the whole laying a mooring for a 14 foot boat should not be too great a problem compared with a yacht since everything can be lighter and more manageable.

If your mooring is lying in mud you will need to replace the swivel every year as mud gets in to it and wears it out as the boat turns round with the tide.


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[Shaddickp]

Jools thanks for your extremely quick and useful advice.

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[Shaddickp]

William, its very kind of you to write at such length, so a really big thanks for your advice and help. Cheers

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[Shaddickp]

Ted thanks a lot for your advice. With yours and the other chaps help I reckon I can have a go.

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[alahol2]

This may be heresy but after replacing risers and or swivels every 2 or 3 or 4 years I decided to use rope from the ground chain up. Admittedly it's 'battleship' mooring warp ie about 2 inch diameter but it's roll hitched to the ground chain and a big spliced eye at the other. I won't tell you how long it took to splice the eye...
It's now in it's tenth year on a 28ft cruiser, previously a 32ft catamaran, and it's just about as good as new. The ground chain is very heavy 1 inch chain with 2 anchors at each end. The lack of a swivel doesn't seem to have any deleterious effects as long as the boat is used fairly regularly ie at least every 3 or 4 weeks.

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[halcyon]

Why anchors all the time ?
All our club mooring are laid to granite blocks, is not the first job to look at the other moorings in the area to see what the local type is.

Brian

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[philwebb]

Hi Shaddickp, You could do what they do around St Malo. Get an old tyre and fill
it with concrete. Sink a piece of iron bar with a loop in it in the top. When the concrete
has set attach a suitable length of chain, a swivel , a length of rope (preferably with
nylon or metal eyelets ) add a pickup buoy and you have a fairly bombproof mooring.
The longer it is used the more it will embed itself in the sand or mud.

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