Passarelle length

Magnum

Magnum

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We are currently sitting out a windy spell in Puerto Banus. We are quite exposed with no boats either side of us. Anyone who has moored here will know the bow lines are attached to long lengths of very heavy chain so you have to use a winch to get enough tension. We thought we had plenty until the wind picked up and our large inflatable fenders saved us from a nasty crunch.

Now we have retensioned the bow line and are a comfortable distance from the quay. Not as easy as it sounds as the windlass control is inside the foredeck hatch which is prevented from opening properly by the line to the winch!

However, our passarelle is nowhere near long enough to allow for a safe leap to the quay. It's just under 3.5m long and at a rough guess overhangs the bathing platform by no more than 50-60cm which seems woefully inadequate especially when carrying our daughter. A quick look around the marina shows that most boats have much longer passarelle overhang. Could anyone with a similar sized boat to our Princess 68 tell me how much overhang they have please?
 
Not really related to boat length, but for safe med mooring, I'd like to be around 1m from the quay if possible.
With a .6m overhang, you're unlikely to be more than .8m and that's dodgy in a windy marina with you trying to board carrying the baby...
Are you sure it's 3.5m? how big is the bathing platform?

cheers

V.
 
Magnum said:
seems woefully inadequate
Click to expand...
In fact it is.
Welcome to the "function follows form" world: a 3.5m passerelle with just half a meter overhang sounds like a practical joke! :ambivalence:

And I doubt that you can do anything about that too, unless Princess already designed its placement with an optional longer passerelle in mind - I'm assuming it's a letterbox passerelle, innit?

A popular and relatively easy trick is to add a fixed extension to the tip of the passerelle, but you can't do that with a fully retractable one, obviously.
 
Sounds to me like your lines weren't tight enough.
But maybe I've misunderstood you.
Surely, you have stern winches.
We set the bow line first and then winch back with the stern winches.
Initially, I set the bow far to short so that when the stern lines are tightened, we are too far from the quay/dock.
Then it is easy to work out how much to let off and re-tighten the stern.
This way the boat is under tension all the time so you can get closer to the quay and your passerelle will be long enough.
We NEVER use the bow winch/windlass to tighten the lines - far too difficult.
 
We have always used exactly the same technique. It doesn't work here. The main reason is the combination of deep water and incredibly heavy mooring chain which the bow line is attached to. It is physically impossible to get enough tension on the bow line by hand even with long stern lines. This is why everyone in this part of the port uses their windlass every time.

We had the added problem of no boat either side of us and being fully exposed to the south westerly which was flicking the bow round. Magnum also has a lot of windage.

The only way to ensure we were safe was to winch the bow line bar tight, keep the stern lines a little longer and brace of with extra stern lines attached to the lower cleats (we can't use crossed lines due to the tender).

Actually we are no further way from the quay than most of the other similar sized boats around us, but our passarelle is much shorter. The leap to the shore isn't safe and we need a longer passarelle. It's a simple as that.

Hurricane said:
Sounds to me like your lines weren't tight enough.
But maybe I've misunderstood you.
Surely, you have stern winches.
We set the bow line first and then winch back with the stern winches.
Initially, I set the bow far to short so that when the stern lines are tightened, we are too far from the quay/dock.
Then it is easy to work out how much to let off and re-tighten the stern.
This way the boat is under tension all the time so you can get closer to the quay and your passerelle will be long enough.
We NEVER use the bow winch/windlass to tighten the lines - far too difficult.
Click to expand...
 
Magnum said:
Yep, that would work. Exit products are first class - we had one of their carbon gangways on our Bordeaux 60.

I would much rather have a passarelle that was long enough though ....
Click to expand...

Indeed, but as others have said, if it's a cassette job, fitting a longer one may not be possible. Are you certain that it's fully extended? Do you know the model number, if so does the length correspond to the manufacturer's spec?

This thread reminds me of of an article I was reading about Sam Newington who saw Fairline go from building 20 foot boats to a workforce of a 1000+ and building 65 footers. Whenever FL launched a new model he would have the first one delivered to his home in the South of France where he'd use it for his holiday. Stuff like this would be quickly noticed with orders / lists relayed back to the factory of items that needed addressing (immediately). The guys at the factory used to dread "Sam's summer holiday"! It's a shame those days are gone...

Pete
 
Yep, it's a 3.5m model built to Princess's specification. I spoke to Aquamare yesterday who supply Princess with Opacmare and they are fitting a custom 4.1m model to another 68 soon. Why this wasn't standard fit I don't know.
 
I haven't measured it, but we have about a foot of clearance between tender and platform when lifting the tender at full extension (our pass doubles up as the tender crane), which suggests the pass clears the platform by about 1.1m.
 
Magnum said:
We have always used exactly the same technique. It doesn't work here. The main reason is the combination of deep water and incredibly heavy mooring chain which the bow line is attached to. It is physically impossible to get enough tension on the bow line by hand even with long stern lines. This is why everyone in this part of the port uses their windlass every time.

We had the added problem of no boat either side of us and being fully exposed to the south westerly which was flicking the bow round. Magnum also has a lot of windage.

The only way to ensure we were safe was to winch the bow line bar tight, keep the stern lines a little longer and brace of with extra stern lines attached to the lower cleats (we can't use crossed lines due to the tender).

Actually we are no further way from the quay than most of the other similar sized boats around us, but our passarelle is much shorter. The leap to the shore isn't safe and we need a longer passarelle. It's a simple as that.
Click to expand...

Sounds like I'm suffering from not being there and understanding the problem.
I see your problem now.

I wonder if the passerelle length issue is that they have fitted the same passerelle to this size of boat since before the hi/lo bathing platform days.
And now that the platforms are bigger, they haven't actually got round to increasing the passerelle length.
I don't know if you can remember but the P67 passerelle's length is fine.
 
Yes we never had problems with our 67.

Do you know how much the pass overhangs your platform?
Hurricane said:
Sounds like I'm suffering from not being there and understanding the problem.
I see your problem now.

I wonder if the passerelle length issue is that they have fitted the same passerelle to this size of boat since before the hi/lo bathing platform days.
And now that the platforms are bigger, they haven't actually got round to increasing the passerelle length.
I don't know if you can remember but the P67 passerelle's length is fine.
Click to expand...
 
Magnum said:
Yes we never had problems with our 67.

Do you know how much the pass overhangs your platform?
Click to expand...

Never measured it but here are a couple of pics

Fully extended

serve.php


Partially extended - but still long enough.

serve.php


Hope that helps
 
Only thing I can suggest is measure
The distance behind the current cassette in the ER space ,with a view to fitting a longer one --it its feasible ?
Measure the actual size of the designated box space ( ifs there's no wiggle room to go longer ?) and send the dims off to alternate Pass makers
Pincraft is what I have at least 1-1.2 overhang .

Take a look @ thewebsite

http://www.pin-craft.it/


Flog off or return the exsisting to Princess for a refund !
 
petem said:
Looks short, particularly when you compare it to that Ferretti(?) to your starboard side.
Click to expand...
Well P, that's an early 90s F185, with the original foldable passerelle.
No modern boat with a forward raked transom would come close to that sort of overhang.

The more appropriate comparison is with JW: even her passerelle doesn't overhang as much as in the F185 (I think), but it's MUCH better than in Magnum anyway.
In fact, it's no coincidence that it's retractable in 3 sections rather than 2 (which btw also allows for a more extended horizontal part of the handrail).

But this is good news, sort of: the fact that the existing passerelle has 2 sections leaves a hope that its cassette is large enough to replace it with a longer one in 3 sections.
The replacement will still take a ridiculous amount of money, both for parts and labour, but heyho!
One thing it would be worth discussing with the builder is that the thing they installed is borderline on not being fit for purpose - let alone adequate to the boat size/cost... :ambivalence:
 
MapisM said:
Well P, that's an early 90s F185, with the original foldable passerelle.
No modern boat with a forward raked transom would come close to that sort of overhang.

The more appropriate comparison is with JW: even her passerelle doesn't overhang as much as in the F185 (I think), but it's MUCH better than in Magnum anyway.
In fact, it's no coincidence that it's retractable in 3 sections rather than 2 (which btw also allows for a more extended horizontal part of the handrail).

But this is good news, sort of: the fact that the existing passerelle has 2 sections leaves a hope that its cassette is large enough to replace it with a longer one in 3 sections.
The replacement will still take a ridiculous amount of money, both for parts and labour, but heyho!
One thing it would be worth discussing with the builder is that the thing they installed is borderline on not being fit for purpose - let alone adequate to the boat size/cost... :ambivalence:
Click to expand...

Magnum's post #9 suggests a potential fix. I guess the question would be who pays for it.
 
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