Octoplait bridle advice for a Mooring

[FairweatherDave]

Following on from the thread on staying on the mooring through the winter/ off season I need to improve my mooring arrangement. Currently I have the "top chain" from a swivel over the bow roller to a single central bow cleat. So a chain strop.
I want to put something from the mooring swivel to take up snatch loads and make the chain the back up.

Ideally this would be done with stuff I already have. What I have tried to do is use a very long piece of Octoplait, running around from one quarter cleat via the side deck to the bow and back to the other quarter cleat. I have "joined " this to a single rope strop coming over the second bow roller using a bowline, for the time being. I'm 100% certain this is not good practice for any length of time (the join that is). I like the idea of symetrical stretchy octoplait. And the advantage of the single rope strop coming over a roller rather than chafing in fairleads. But how to join the two?

Two other factors. Yes, ropes need regular inspection for chafe. I could use rubber snubbers instead of a long bridle but I think the chafing through the fairleads could be quick. (I think the fairleads are good for marinas and the angle of mooring lines off a pontoon). If I use a single snubber/strop over the bow roller I think it would have to share the main cleat with the top chain. Is that a bad thing, there is just enough space on the cleat? Secondly the octoplait is about 20mm diameter. Would it be wrong to use mid ship cleats instead of the quarter cleats? ie is half the length enough just going to midship cleats? Boat is 29ft Konsort

Thanks for any advice.

 

[lw395]

Long snubbers will be moving around the bow fitting and will chafe.
For long term it's just a bad concept in my view.

I found a really short strop so the boat and buoy moved together was the best solution.
Take some of the weight of the buoy and riser on the bow. On a light boat the cockpit might not drain if you overdo this!
If the buoy and boat are apart, the motion will be very jerky in some wave conditions, particularly if you have wind vs current chop. So you need a lot of 'give' if you go down this path. It's not so bad if the buoy is small compared to the boat. If you can moor on a really long strop, that can work, but we never had the space.

Moorings and the way they behave in rough weather vary a lot. You need to watch the boat, or better still be on it, through some blows from different directions before you can have proper confidence.
There's less to go wrong with a nice short chain. I used a rope strop, but I was in a position to visit the boat daily until I was sure I had eliminated chafe.

BTW, the closest I've come to a mooring failure is a shackle on a chain strop working loose, the pickup line was a back up that time.

 

[FairweatherDave]

Thanks for the reply. Good answer! You would be in a minority in Chichester harbour judging by my observations yesterday, I reckon about 70% have some kind of snubber or a second strop. Not saying that is a bad thing though!
I guess I could still use a second chain strop through the other bow roller and still use an octoplait bridle.

 

[rotrax]

For several years we used Gosport Boatyard's moorings by Burrow or Rat island-the ones just past where you would turn in for Royal Clarance Marina.

They fixed the chafe over the bow roller with large ID rubber or plastic tubing over the strop.

Simples..........................

 

[FairweatherDave]

No one wants to tell me if I can put a knot in my octoplait, or how I could attach to a chain or rope strop to it.
I have seen the plastic pipe solutions for chafe. Also I have read about plastic breaking up and then slicing the rope but I guess the right soft of plastic plus replacement before it degrades. Recommendations?

 

[rotrax]

The most durable and long lasting was straight lengths of black car radiator hose. It is also softer and has no significant hardening with age.

 

[zoidberg]

No one wants to tell me if I can put a knot in my octoplait, or how I could attach to a chain or rope strop to it.

Of course you can make knots and bends in octoplait. Depending on task, some are more suitable than others.

You'll probably want to keep your double long snubber arrangement. Borrow a routine technique from the 'days of working sail' ( Harland's 'Seamanship In The Age Of Sail' ) and make up some 'stoppers' in modern rope to spread some of the load into spare deckeyes, midship cleats, sheet winches, etc.

One way is to make up some 2m. loops ( spliced, or tied 'double fisherman' ) in ideally stretchy rope and loop one around an arm of your bridle on deck, using a simple load-jamming Prusik Loop - like a CowHitch, passed round twice. The free end/loop is dropped over your spare cleat; the Prusik is slid forward along your bridle-arm until it is tight, thus taking some load.

Google Images/Animated Knots

Repeat on the other side-deck, and as often as you have space/inclination. Adjust, observe, re-adjust until content.

I have seen the plastic pipe solutions for chafe. Also I have read about plastic breaking up and then slicing the rope but I guess the right soft of plastic plus replacement before it degrades.

Recommendations?

For years I've used time-expired/redundant layflat hosepipe, in several different diameters according to need, slipped down along the rope. This tough material is widely available ( it is a 'lifed item' changed frequently as fire insurers dictate ), usually FOC. I secure each length in place, using cords through holes, tying each end to the warp/rode as necessary.

 

[seumask]

Second the plastic tubing over the rope through the bow fitting. We use that on our Westerly in Chichester Harbour. Mooring chain on port bow roller and main bow cleat, rope (20mm nylon 3 strand), (through clear plastic Pipe) slightly shorter on the starboard bow roller, back to second cleat.
At the buoy end each is shackled with large shackel (approx 2" accross) to the swivel on top of the buoy. The Rope is spliced onto a hard metal eye through which the Shackle goes to stop chafe at that end.

 

[FairweatherDave]

Hi Seumask
Curious about the location of your second cleat on your Fulmar. Is it fairly close to the main bow cleat?
Also have you got any snubber with the rope strop or do you just rely on keeping tight to the bouy.

 

[Kukri]

Another vote for a very short strop, taking a little of the weight of the riser on the boat, so that the buoy comes slightly out of the water.

I have used the sort of green hose that you use for bilge pump suctions over the rope strop and that lasted a winter.

 

[lw395]

Depending on where you are in Chi harbour, you may not get the chop we get in parts of Portsmouth Harbour, so hanging on a couple of metres of strop to the buoy may be absolutely fine. We also get 'circular tide syndrome' where some boats rotate clockwise twice a day, making a simple mooring with good swivels paramount. Also the wind is often across the tide if not against it. We love the place really though!
I've moored in parts of Chi Harbour in a fair amount of breeze and it's much less rough unless there's a gale blowing right down the channel.

 

[lw395]

Of course you can make knots and bends in octoplait. Depending on task, some are more suitable than others.

You'll probably want to keep your double long snubber arrangement. Borrow a routine technique from the 'days of working sail' ( Harland's 'Seamanship In The Age Of Sail' ) and make up some 'stoppers' in modern rope to spread some of the load into spare deckeyes, midship cleats, sheet winches, etc.

......

The bow mooring cleat or samson post is the tool for the job and should be strong enough.
Long snubbers which are doing anything useful will be moving a cm or more on every wave. This will chafe through almost anything over a winter.

Yes you can tie knots in fat octoplait, but a mooring is very good at working knots loose. I'd rather get some fat 3 strand and splice it. Any knots would need to be backed up with extra hitches and the free ends seized IMHO. The trouble with fat rope is you can't pull knots tight enough to stay tight on an alternating load. I would not trust a simple bowline which was repeatedly loaded then slack for a week.

 

[Kukri]

The bow mooring cleat or samson post is the tool for the job and should be strong enough.
Long snubbers which are doing anything useful will be moving a cm or more on every wave. This will chafe through almost anything over a winter.

Yes you can tie knots in fat octoplait, but a mooring is very good at working knots loose. I'd rather get some fat 3 strand and splice it. Any knots would need to be backed up with extra hitches and the free ends seized IMHO. The trouble with fat rope is you can't pull knots tight enough to stay tight on an alternating load. I would not trust a simple bowline which was repeatedly loaded then slack for a week.

+1.

I also think that three strand - which will become brutally hard after a season as a mooring strop - is more resistant to chafe.

 

[rotrax]

The bow mooring cleat or samson post is the tool for the job and should be strong enough.
Long snubbers which are doing anything useful will be moving a cm or more on every wave. This will chafe through almost anything over a winter.

Yes you can tie knots in fat octoplait, but a mooring is very good at working knots loose. I'd rather get some fat 3 strand and splice it. Any knots would need to be backed up with extra hitches and the free ends seized IMHO. The trouble with fat rope is you can't pull knots tight enough to stay tight on an alternating load. I would not trust a simple bowline which was repeatedly loaded then slack for a week.

I successfuly spliced eyes in our new octoplait mooring warps two winters ago-so splice the octoplait.

I have a Jimmy Green stern anchor rode, octoplait spliced to chain.

I also have used-on some large diameter very old three strand stuff I was given in NZ that was so stiff my arthritic hands could not do it- bowlines with the tail wired and taped over for security.

My NZ caretaker reports all well with the boat-and the mooring lines.

So, with direct experience, a bowline is OK if the tail is secured.

Not as strong as a splice, but strong enough for my use.

 

[lw395]

Yes Octoplait can be spliced, one of those things I'd like to learn to do. But I'd like to practice on lesser things than my mooring.
It's not expensive to get a mooring pennant spliced by a pro, but somehow when I decide I need one, it's a same-day job. I've still got one from my old boat, too fat for the bow roller of our current boat.

 

[Yellow Ballad]

I spliced a hard and soft eye in octoplait a few weeks back for the first time, pretty straight forward. I marked all the strands as a lot of the guides say but found it wasn't needed and didn't bother with the hard eye, just a bit of tape on one set of pairs to id them. IIRC the trick I found was to not pull the tucks tight till you had all four done and then tighten them before moving onto the next set.

Edit (I've not really read the thread properly), could you not use your twin octoplait bridle from the stern cleats cow hitched through a shackle over the bow fairleads and use a chain hook/lock on the top chain riser a bit like if you were anchoring?

 

[Kelpie]

Splicing octoplait is pretty easy- you'll find a diagram online.
Definitely use some sort of chafe protection. The minimum would be lay-flat hose, but much better to use a more rigid tubing. I use reinforced PC food grade hose. It will become a bit brittle after a couple of years of UV but by that point you should be changing the strop anyway.

 

[Stemar]

My mooring, off Quay Lane in Portsmouth Harbour is all chain. I've never noticed much snatching, but it does graunch and clonck, which is undesirable at night, so I have a snubber of nylon line, an offcut of my mooring lines. It has an eye splice at one end to go over the Samson post, a rubber mooring line snubber, a bit of plastic pipe to protect it where it goes over the bow roller and another eye splice with pair of chain hooks, one sized for the mooring chain, the other for the anchor chain. In use, I moor or anchor as usual, then pull in enough slack to ensure the strain is on the snubber line, hook it on and let go. The chain, which is now slack is dropped into a fairlead so the snubber line has the roller to itself. It's now over 10 years old, so I probably ought to renew it, but it's given be excellent (and quiet) service.

 

[FairweatherDave]

Lots of useful advice, thanks.
I have only gone with the idea of a bridle because I have a single central cleat aft of the bow roller. So despite the bow roller having two rollers whatever comes over them has to share the single cleat. The simple solution is to do that, one the official top chain from the mooring swivel and the other a shorter snubbing chain or rope strop suitably protected. Is it okay to share the cleat? Hopefully only one line is doing any work and the top chain is back up.
I suggested the bridle to bring other cleats into play (I don't doubt my main cleat but it is still a single failure point).

Meanwhile I would add my mooring is in Sweare deep, (Chichester) just outside the entrance to Northney Marina. It is very sheltered with little chop unless you get a NW gale co-inciding with HW Springs (acc to the moorings officer). So I want my precautions purely as overkill .

 

[Kelpie]

There's nothing wrong with relying on a single cleat if it's sufficiently strong and bolted down well. So it's hard to say without seeing it.