Mooring Cleats!!!

[Langouste]

Am I the only one who gets fed up with trying to tie up to mooring cleats which have been surrounded in yards of lines. Why , why can't people use a bowline on to a cleat. In Weymouth last week I was on the outside of three yachts and there wasn't even room to safely tie on a shoreline due to the excessive use of string!

Bah Humbug!!!

 

[escape]

God no,...that would mean all that 'stringy stuff' messing up my deck

 

[Twister_Ken]

Excess yotosity

Mooring cleats are namby pamby things designed for yachts and marina pontoons. What harbours should provide are mooring bollards, where the only option is to drop a bowlined loop over them, or mooring rings where a bowline needs to made through them.

I'm surprised that somewhere as salty as Weymouth has succumbed.

 

[Langouste]

Re: Excess yotosity

Couldn't agree more.

 

[Chris_Stannard]

The problem is that if you have a raft of boats every one thinks he has to have lines out to the shore. It does not take to much sense of geometry to see that the only good the outside boats lines do is help if there is a wind blowing you all off of the jetty.

The real problem is the surge backwards and forwards. The best answer is to have tight springs on all boats so that the raft cannot surge. It also assumes that reasonable lines are used for tying up rather than the bits of ginger string some people seem to think adequate.

I would agree on one point, and that is that bowlines should be used, If you dip the eye of your warp through your predecessors eye anyone can slip without having to go through the pain of untying all of the lines.

What a wonderful world that would be.

Chris Stannard

 

[Mirelle]

No you are not. Entered local marina at short notice (engine without cooling water suddenly) singlehanded, late at night. Boats ahead and astern of the only space on the visitors berth had Figure 8'ed fat warps so as to TOTALLY occupy all cleats. I did not scratch their gelcoats....and if I had, handling 10 tons of boat into a tight space with NOTHING to make fast to save for a few deft one handed bowlines round the staging, would it have been my fault?

<P ID="edit"><FONT SIZE=-1>Edited by mirelle on 07/07/2002 00:10 (server time).</FONT></P>

 

[AndrewB]

No Problem!

Just squeeze their three lines together where they reach the cleat, and then tie yours around the three of them with a rolling hitch. None of them can then move without sorting out your line, and if anyone complains (which they surely will) you have every excuse.

If it were done to us of course, we would probably just cast off the offending guy. But the type of person who believes in loading marina cleats to the deliberate exclusion of everyone else, is invariably one of those blue-flagged, yachting-capped, wax-the-yot-every-Sunday types who excels at red-faced indignation and very little else. Explain in your most patient voice how to tie a bowline, they might even be grateful.