Two bits of mooring rope and a decent old tyre: winter mooring covered

[William_H]

I bought some enormous ones 6 years ago at the advice of the marina owner. They're still going strong. I think UV damage is limited to the surface so the large ones last forever. Same principle as polyprop ships ropes.

Welll I may be wrong about the UV but they seem to be able to part in the middle. No I don't think anyone has been clever enough to fit UV protection. It doesn't affect me as I stick with private swing mooring still. olewill

 

[fisherman]

Have you actually done that or just dreamed it up in the lounge. It will rub on the middle bollard & wear through. It does this because it stretches thus moving back & forth

Routinely, but I do have to address chafe issues, bit of pipe/carpet on the warp. Better is to tie the warp to the intermediate bollard rather than go round it, and if it's a ringbolt the ring will move with the warp. I can't run the warp direct to a distant point because there are boats ahead and astern in most cases, the warps drop under their fenders or pick up in their superstructure. Length is your friend. There will always be a chafe point, even coming over the quay edge, which is not a problem on a pontoon, but small cleats will chafe as well. During the storms in Porthleven I almost came to grief when three forward warps, the ones with chains hung on them, pulled the fitting out of the quay. This left the boat on one 80mm diameter braid which had no give whatsoever. It was made up round the forehatch and hauler cabinet. The hatch came out of the deck, the cabinet, a box section of 5mm steel was crushed but held.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MgwWvq8prA (turn the sound off)

That's me alongside the quay from 1.20 on. One stern rope is also 80mm, across the gaps, made up round the wheelhouse, which suffered a bit. 14.5 tons is a lot to hang on to.

 

[Ian_Edwards]

I had a boat in Peterhead Marina for 5years, which gets a lot of North Sea swell.
The best system I came up with was to use multi plait nylon mooring lines, which stretch a lot under load (+60% or so the failure)
I doubled up the mooring lines (bow, stern and two springs), with one line sightly shack, so that the second line starts to take the strain in rough weather or high winds, this gives a two stage stretch.
I used bowlines around the mooring cleats with the loop of the bowline inside layflat hose pipe. As the nylon stretches it moves inside the smooth layflat hose and doesn't wear.
Without the layflat hose the nylon lines would wear through in a winter.

 

[Jamesuk]

Just reporting back

50+ knots of wind and swell last week, without tyre's, it is a night of worry, with a few tyres it still gives some snatching. With every line set up with a tyre and a back up "normal mooring line" to take up the last bit of stretch to give the tyre (which don't forget is made with steel) some final support. Gives an almost "noise free" interior. I am sure if I put the back up lines on tyres I would hear nothing but then I might start thinking it is too quiet and wake up suddenly and think that I was adrift at 3am ))

When setting up the boat it was the first time in 4 years I realised "we need more cleats". Some Oysters have a nice position for a 5th cleat on each side on the stern of the boat. This would have been useful. I have thought about making up strops to clean the cleat but if the boat would need to be moved unexpectedly it is good to be able to dump every line from the boat without any "excitement" from people who were not there when setting it all up, of course I could leave a nice big knife

Anyway, happy as larry with the tyres, I would highly recommend them and would even suggest that a small one (like a jetski trailer size tyre) was used on your snubber while at anchor for extended periods.

Happy days.