MOORING LUMP

[Lakesailor]

These are the mooring blocks they use on Windermere. You can work out their size from clues in the pic, but they are about 4ft or so square.

A 23 foot boat would use one. A heavy 26 foot boat like a Westerly may use 2 depending on how exposed the mooring was.

They leave thenm for a week before using, to allow them to settle into the lake bed.

 

[Bajansailor]

Sorry for disagreeing with you re anchors, but my comments were simply based on my own experiences using anchors in our mooring for a 35', 6 tonne sailing yacht in 8m. of water.

It has been down for 8 years now, and has a 40 lb Sentinel (Danforth copy) along with a Danforth plough (a grossly inferior copy of the CQR, could never get it to set, hence why it was relegated to the mooring).
Oh, and there is a 13 lb Danforth (proper one!) on about 8' of chain in tandem with the Sentinel - I added it about 4 years ago after finding that the Sentinel had tripped out (but did re-set, partially) in some rather high winds we had. They have both been well buried since then.

All three of these anchors are still in fine fettle - I go diving on the mooring every 4 months or so. And the ground chains are 3/8", and still the original - but I think that is because they are buried in the sand and hardly move.
I have 15' of fairly heavy ships studlink anchor chain between the 3/8" ground chain and the riser, in way of where the chain comes off the bottom, as I have noticed that this seems to be where most of the wear happens. This has been down for 8 years, and has various zinc anodes attached to it (incl some prop shaft anodes) which seem to be working.

Original riser chain was 3/8", subsequently replaced, then a second 3/8" riser was added for extra redundancy, then both were scrapped about 18 months ago in favour of a single 1/2" riser, and this seems to be holding up reasonably well. However I have noticed that in addition to just where the chain rises off the bottom, corrosion of chains seems to be accelerated near the surface, perhaps because of more oxygen and high salt levels (?).

 

[GMac]

Those are great looking weights the lakesailor. Unless it was a real bad spot or hard bottom a 26fter would get away with only one of those. Certainly would if a soft muddy bottom, the suction would be huge. Chain looks piddly though.

Bajansailor, many situations have many options. You must be in a very sheltered spot with minimal movement with that set-up. You in fresh water as well? Here any mooring with 3/8 chain on it would be instantly condemned. A small chain here is 13mm and that's only the top chain, everything below that would be 16mm minimum. An average mooring would have 16mm down to 20mm down to 34mm to the weight. Most with a 20mm min polyester head rope, some use the 13mm chain instead sometimes. Diving on mooring is also a no-no, you can't see the real icky bits. On average you would have the 16mm chain and swivel (usually 22mm) replaced every 2nd inspection, 5-6 years. Oh and none of it is ever galvanised (top chain maybe) or made in china (it only lasts a 1/3 of the time as real stuff).

 

[Lakesailor]

[ QUOTE ]
Oh and none of it is ever galvanised (top chain maybe) or made in china (it only lasts a 1/3 of the time as real stuff).

[/ QUOTE ]
They replaced the cables the car ferry pulls itself across the lake on Windermere last year on the 15th March
The cables came from Taiwan as no-one in the UK could supply it.

They've just replaced a 500 metre length of one of them.


(Those chains of the pics of the slabs are much smaller than the sinker chain on my slab. I think they were just for lifting the slabs onto the barge.)