Mooring Strop , making fast to the boat.

[Seajet]

I have never known a moused shackle come undone on anyone else's, let alone my mooring.

One point I meant to mention, which I discovered the hard way.

If using a rope strop beware of it looping over the buoy when the boat drifts up to it, this usually happens in light wind over tide.

The rope is then wrapped round and under the buoy and up against the razor sharp barnacles likely to be there; at HISC I found a 20mm nylon strop was usually chafed enough to be discarded after 3 months.

Personally I think there's very little elasticity to take the shock out of waves in a short thick length of nylon like a mooring strop; in reality the damping in strong winds is done by the weight of the floating buoy and its mooring chain.

I'll just mention again, swivels are usually the weakest link and the reason for most of the mooring failures I've seen, keep an eye on them !

 

[Daydream believer]

I have never known a moused shackle come undone on anyone else's, let alone my mooring.

!

perhaps that is because you only have one mooring to look after not 84

 

[SteveTibbetts]

I have never known a moused shackle come undone on anyone else's, let alone my mooring.

I have, mine. Monel wire chafed through on the stern fixing shackle due we think to old cringles being left on the mooring. Happened at the start of lift-out weekend so i know the lifespan of monel when left where it can chafe. Fortunately my mate was around and saw her sideways on in the channel still fixed at the bow and went over to retrieve. Unfortunately he fell in while doing so. Oh how we laughed afterwards.

Ive added a mid-season check to the routine jobs list (and picked up PBO's nifty looking tip to use a second small shackle through the eye of the first shackles bolt, and mouse that one)

 

[Seajet]

perhaps that is because you only have one mooring to look after not 84

Wrong !

Over the 37 years I've had my mooring, including laying the sinker and renewing ground chains, I have also helped maintain all the other club moorings from laying sinkers to everything up from that.

I don't remember how many that is offhand but certainly around your 84 mark; in fact I'm helping a new member with their mooring tomorrow - Saturday.

 

[harstonwood]

No need to be stroppy!



I'll get my coat !

 

[Kelpie]

I use a 32mm seasteel strop, 8 strand, with a soft eye on deck that loops over the base of the windlass (it's too big fit the cleats). My only concern is that there is no obvious way to move the chafe point where it goes over the roller.
On the previous boat the strop was smaller and had no eye in the end; I would just cleat it off, allowing me to alter the chafe point easily.

 

[jakeroyd]

Kelpie. I see what you are saying.
If I have a soft eye on the boat end I could vary the chafe point by lacing the eye to the cleat differently or pull the strop over using a line from the other cleat.
As another poster noted the spliced bit might fall right on the roller due to the cleats being well forward.

 

[jdc]

...the number of shackles that come undone each year is about 10% in spite of alleged mousing. ...

Can you be more precise / amplify? I'm interested in failure probabilities and real-world data is invaluable.

But I don't think you can actually mean that the chance of any one shackle coming undone is really 10% p.a.. If that were the case, then my mooring has:
- one each end of the ground chain,
- one attaching the riser to the middle of the ground chain
- one attaching the lower riser to the swivel
- one joining the swivel to the upper riser (which passes through the float), and
- one big one forming the loop on the top of the float. Plus
- one attaching the strop to the fore-mentioned loop on top of the buoy.

That's 7 shackles, the failure of any one of which is a failure of the mooring. Thus, even assuming that the only cause of failure is shackles, a small boat-yard with 50 moorings would have a boat go adrift every 10 days on average. Seems way too many, so shackles in general can't have anything like as high a probability of failure.

Maybe the failure rate is not constant with time but accelerates after a few years (one might expect a 'bath-tub' curve), or those in certain places in the mooring system are more prone than others, or the failures have a dominant but non-random cause, such as human error.

 

[rob2]

I was just thinking how many options are being offered for such an apparently simple task (such is life). Just to add another... If you use chain with a shackled loop to drop over the cleat you effectively eliminate chafe problems. You can then attach a rope close to the bow roller and take it back to the sheet winch giving a good length of snubber. Should the rope fail, the boat falls back only inches onto the chain. On our club moorings many advise using a strop short enough to take up the buoyancy of the hippo buoy so that it can't get under the bow under slack conditions.

Rob.

 

[Seajet]

rob2,

a few people at my club do that; it works, but as nothing works 100% the chain and rope will eventually twist together as the boat circles on the tide*, winding the whole lot tight.

This is only if the boat and mooring are left untouched for periods of several weeks or longer.

If one can be sure of getting to the boat often, not falling ill or having an accident, it's fine !

Personally I'm happier with a strong well sorted & maintained chain, as long as the swivel ( on top of the floating buoy, nothing preventing one below the buoy too if well maintained except lots of joins ) works the boat will be fine, and chafe is not a worry.

BTW I am the most boat-safety conscious, careful to the point of paranoid owner you will ever meet.

* For years it was thought that boats on our moorings streamed NE on the flood, SW on the ebb so described 180 degrees; it was only when I happened to be offered an aerial shoot at low water that we saw the 360 degree marks from every boat on the mud, all around every sinker.

 

[reeac]

In our mooring area you would not be too popular with dinghy sailors if you have long mooring lines.
Also if you get wind against tide the buoy can rub further aft from the bow marking a greater area of hull if not pulled up tight
We recommend that boats have 2 lines, one which is shorter so that from the shore one can see one line hanging in a droop. If one cannot see it one knows one has snapped & you need to get out to it a bit sharpish
Chain is OK but as the reserve to a rope. It does less damage to the bow roller if not under load
I make loads of mooring lines for owners . I do 2 types - chain with a spliced rode loop or 25 mm multiplait with a loop for the deck cleat

I rarely make them longer than 1.5 metres

/QUOTE] I'm urnrepentant. I want to be able to guarantee to pick up and hold the strop long enough to get it onto the cleat, which I very nearly was unable to do on one occasion after returning under rough conditions from a longish day's sailing. I also sail a dayboat amongst moorings and don't think that an extra 1-2 metres of strop on top of an 8 to 10 metre boat makes much difference to things.

 

[Birdseye]

Hi

My boat is moored on a swinger all summer so I have enough knowledge to know that there isnt a perfect mooring strop solution. That said, there are one or two suggestions I can make that5 might help.

Your piccie shows the rode going out in front of the boat at a shallow angle - that should not happen with a mooring. I would recommend keeping the strop short enbough so that you are taking a small amount of weight off the support buoy - that way the strop is under load and stays in the roller better. The boat doesnt walse around its mooring as much either. Obvioulsy you still need a pin to keep the strop in the roller at all times.

IMO a single strop should be chain to avoid fretting. With that bit of tension in it, it wont get near your topsides. You can always put the bit that comes over the roller into plastic tube to prevent rust stains on the deck. You only need to use one cleat anyway but if you are a belt and braces man you can rig an entirely seperate safety strop ( maybe rope this time) to the other cleat. I wouldnt bother.

I cannot conceive of how anyone would have detailed reliable data to say that 10% of shackles come undone. In my personal experience over 30 years I have never once had a single shackle come undone and for 20 of those years there were 6 shackles on my mooring. Usually I prefer galvanised shackles and mouse them with stainless steel wire. Use load tested shackles rather bthan the made in India type with a badly formed thread.

Lastly., make suren that your swivel under the lift buoy is free and antifoul it top prevent it seizing up with babay mussels.

 

[Seajet]

In our mooring area you would not be too popular with dinghy sailors if you have long mooring lines.
Also if you get wind against tide the buoy can rub further aft from the bow marking a greater area of hull if not pulled up tight
We recommend that boats have 2 lines, one which is shorter so that from the shore one can see one line hanging in a droop. If one cannot see it one knows one has snapped & you need to get out to it a bit sharpish
Chain is OK but as the reserve to a rope. It does less damage to the bow roller if not under load
I make loads of mooring lines for owners . I do 2 types - chain with a spliced rode loop or 25 mm multiplait with a loop for the deck cleat

I rarely make them longer than 1.5 metres

/QUOTE] I'm urnrepentant. I want to be able to guarantee to pick up and hold the strop long enough to get it onto the cleat, which I very nearly was unable to do on one occasion after returning under rough conditions from a longish day's sailing. I also sail a dayboat amongst moorings and don't think that an extra 1-2 metres of strop on top of an 8 to 10 metre boat makes much difference to things.

This demonstrates why I much prefer chain rather than rope strops ' guaranteed to give up ' as described above !

As for strop length, within reason this should not be a problem for other sailors in dinghies etc.

If going to leeward of moored boats the stern is the stern however far it is from the buoy, and a dinghy helmsman sitting to windward can see it easily.

The problem is when smartarse racing dinghies try sailing through the moorings - banned at my club and a lot of others.

I once had a Wayfarer accidentaly loop his mainsheet around our stemhead as he tried to claw past to windward in a stiff breeze, resulting in a WTF ?! moment for us as the boat yawed.

Still it made for an introduction and we're good chums now.

 

[lw395]

...... I want to be able to guarantee to pick up and hold the strop long enough to get it onto the cleat, which I very nearly was unable to do on one occasion after returning under rough conditions from a longish day's sailing. I also sail a dayboat amongst moorings and don't think that an extra 1-2 metres of strop on top of an 8 to 10 metre boat makes much difference to things.

When picking up singlehanded in rough conditions, I run a line back from, the bow to the cockpit outside everything.
To moor, your only have to get the end through the eye on the mooring pendant and walk forwards as the boat drops back.

Many club mooring areas don't have enough swinging room for long pendants.

 

[Daydream believer]

I cannot conceive of how anyone would have detailed reliable data to say that 10% of shackles come undone.

I have to keep a record of why boats go adrift & i regularly go through the moorings looking at the buoys & boats & looking to see if any are about to come a cropper
A typical cause of boats going adrift is even the failure of the owner to tie the boat to the mooring strop properly & people using 12mm braid as a single mooring penant
You name it owners manage it

Going on to the matter of extra long strops- not caring about dinghy sailors is typical of some owners & is probably a contributing factor to the animosity between dinghy & cruiser sailors that does exist
When they leave their mooring the lines float ( if that type)& can catch centreboards ( there is also a ski boat club that has a similar problem with floating lines)
Some use silly little buoys & they go just below the surface at certain states of tide. Even our safety boat can get caught out sometimes
We had a carbon Moth a couple of years ago that was returning to shore, foiling, caught the floating penant of a submerged buoy & it ripped the stern clean off the boat
Not much fun for the dinghy sailor

 

[Seajet]

Surely you must find swivels a major cause of failure, unless you maintain them ?

- Yes I know, don't call you Shirley...

 

[rob2]

Yep all the arguments demonstrate that local conditions differ. Our club dinghy sailors are discouraged from sailing through the moorings except for a well planned transit which doesn't take them close to any moored boats. Apart from risk to the sailors, at any moment a tender could emerge from behind the craft unaware of the dinghy's presence. As said earlier, I like a short strop to keep the buoy off the bow (and I hoist the picl-up buoy as an anchor ball). But I also let the tender hang a meter or more off the mooring to aid in getting back. To be honest a foiling dinghy or ski boat should be aware or moorings and avoid them as they present a danger to them.

Rob.

 

[reeac]

This dinghy sailers vs. cruisers thing is a new one to me. In my club many members do both kinds of sailing and our dinghy courses always go through the moorings - in fact that's one of the big challenges when beating to windward. Automatic disqualification if you touch a moored boat so people are careful.

 

[lw395]

This dinghy sailers vs. cruisers thing is a new one to me. In my club many members do both kinds of sailing and our dinghy courses always go through the moorings - in fact that's one of the big challenges when beating to windward. Automatic disqualification if you touch a moored boat so people are careful.

Likewise here.
The only thing that's an annoyance is a long strop streaming in the tide. with nothing visible.
A dinghy streaming a couple of metres from a mooring buoy is no problem, if it was far enough from the buoy to entrap racing dinghies it would probably be at risk of swinging around and hitting moored yachts.

 

[Daydream believer]

This dinghy sailers vs. cruisers thing is a new one to me.
.

Once you have been about for a few years it will come