Tying to swing mooring!!

Lakesailor,

Looking at your pic makes me wonder if he just passed the one single warp through the underwater shackle and back on board. If that is the case I would expect the bit through the shackle would chafe through quite quickly.

Bob
 
You go and tell that to the 3 yachts with damaged top sides due to another yacht going "walkies" during our regatta last year. The boat in question was attached to it's mooring by a single warp, this had chaffed through. Luckily it wasn't windy and the stray boat was quickly picked up by our patrol crew and returned to its mooring with some temporary lines. Damage was slight and largely cosmetic, but still a PITA and involved 2 clubs and 2 insurance companys .....

The state of the single mooring line was attrocious (like my spelin) and the whole episode could have been prevented by use of a non-chaffing chain as a backup - as was proved a couple of seasons back when another yachts line also parted, but was saved by it's chain - the line was then replaced promptly.

If you attend your boat on a frequent basis then chaffed mooring lines is less of an issue as you can check them each time you go out, but if you don't attend so often then a worn hard eye quickly saws through the wall of a spliced eye leaving you with no mooring line.

I will stick with our club recomendations of a rope line with backup chain on our boat. For the sake of a couple of quid I'd like to know my boat is where I left it (and I know I still rely on the block, ground chain and riser, but these are checked bi-annually and replaced if any doubt)
 
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Whatever you do you MUST use chain.
Your boat will be veering thru 360 degrees and it is only a metter of time before any cleat or bow roller saws thru any rope.

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Tosh!
 
I would humbly suggest that you either have a long chain pickup to allow the boat to bounce around without snubbing, or you haul the mooring buoy out of the water each time.
The second is less likely to cause over running problems, or excessive wear on tackle or fittings.
 
Read my first post further up Fireball - just very alarmed at the numbe of people who - as you rightly point out - seem willing to risk leaving their boats tied to bits of string.

'Its worked up to now so it must be Ok' is NOT an excuse AFAIAC for risking letting your boat drift down the moorings.

Oh, and Dogwatch - 'tosh' it may be, but it made one hell of a mess of the 3 boats I ave seen it happen to.... /forums/images/graemlins/shocked.gif
 
There does seem to be a certain amount of "You don't expect it around here" (the quote from the neighbour of any mass murder in a quiet rural village).

Just because it hasn't happened yet doesn't mean it won't. I've posted pics before of a boat that broke free from his single chain strop a year after I suggested doubling up.
A little Leisure 17 on the same moorings had a single rope mooring warp and despite me warning him about the gales last year he did nothing and it went walkabout.

I'm waiting for the local moorings contractor to lift mine to check it at the moment. "middle of January" they said.
No-one seems to take them seriously enough, even professionals.

After all. my boat's not worth much and it's paid for. Some of you have valuable boats that the insurance company could wriggle out of claims for if you give them the ammunition.
 
On all chain there is no give, shock load after shock load.

Most people will have multiple strops or be working their boat daily. The chain for mooring will have to be pretty substantial, none of this 8mm anchor stuff, this is a great deal of weight to hang off the bow and pull aboard, compared to similar breaking strain strops.

As to wear, set as a bridle.

The advice to use all chain is not wrong, but to suggest using rope is tantamount to losing your boat is, well tosh!
 
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On all chain there is no give, shock load after shock load.



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Hang on a minute; if you pull the buoy out of the water you should only get the steady weight of the chain, no shock loads, chain working as designed. or am I missing something, apart from the odd brain cell?
 
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Most people will have multiple strops or be working their boat daily. The chain for mooring will have to be pretty substantial, none of this 8mm anchor stuff,

The advice to use all chain is not wrong, but to suggest using rope is tantamount to losing your boat is, well tosh!

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Multiple strops.... Hmmm - in an ideal world, maybe. Unfortunately I regularly see boats secured with just a single strop. So far only one has gone adrift and ended up smashed up on the rocks. and << working their boats daily>> - if only! Some of them lie untended for weeks on end.

Well if that is a risk you are happy to take, just dont moor near MY boat thanks.

I use 1.5 inch chain riser, and yes it is heavy. A buoy supports most of the weight and a snubber takes the shock loads out of the pennant chain above the main mooring buoy. This arrangement has yet to let me down and has worked well for 40 years. The only mooring failure I ever had was a rented mooring with a rope pennant - which I modified to make a bridle, but which still failed after a protracted spell of bad weather. The chain 'failsafe' I had installed saved the day.

So, IMHO using rope DOES increase the risk - very substantially. Which is fine if it is just your boat that gets smashed. Unfortunately a certain law dictates your boat thumps everything downwind of it as it goes! And I have had that happen twice, both times with boats trailing pieces of rope.
 
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Oh, and Dogwatch - 'tosh' it may be, but it made one hell of a mess of the 3 boats I ave seen it happen to....

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Erm - actually I do partially agree with this .... I've not had much chaff where the line comes through the bow roller ... even our clear plastic hose that covers both rope and chain (2 hoses!) is intact ...

But then - why do cars have deadlocks ?? Surely 1 lock will do? Why do you have a chub lock on the front door of your home? Isn't the Yale enough?
Why trust your £000's worth of boat to 1 rope costing a couple of pounds when for a few extra quid you can add a chain?
 
If the wind and current are sufficient, the chain will be at the end of its scope yes/no? Then any further tugging from the boat rather than with rope which will have elastic properties, the chain will go bar tight as the boat stops dead, moves forward and the whole process begins again.

Does that make sense, I am happy to stand corrected, but my experience of lying to an all chain mooring in heavy weather is the above.
 
I am not sure what you are saying.

A single rope strop is bad practice, or

Using rope strops is bad practice.

Currently on my fore and aft trot mooring I have 6 strops (4 in summer). I would probably have 4 on a swinging mooring, 2 from each hull forming a bridle, it is unwise to load the fore-deck on most cats.

On mono-hulls when we had swinging moorings, in a fairly open moorings on the Wirral we used 3 strops to the chain riser. When we lost one of our boats in the storm in '88 it was the 14mm chain that parted, the strops were in good condition when we recovered the wreck, in fact two of them are in my boot as a tow rope. 26 boats broke that night FWIW.

So, if we were to be secure, we would have needed a full back-up riser, which would still leave the swivel vulnerable, or back up legs, etc etc.

Like I said, I never said chain was wrong, but dismissing the use of strops as bad practise I think is unfair.
 
I can't see the logic in electing not to double up, at least. It can't be cost. It can't be inconveniece, if you set it up correctly. It must just be contrariness.
If your boat does go walkabout, do you know you did the best you could to avoid it?
In the storm of Jan 2005 74 boats left their moorings on Windermere. Most were of the "haven't been looked at for months" variety, but quite a few were well kept boats.
 
I reckon to have enough ground chain between the weight and riser to provide for this, I would not want to be at the 'end of my tether' in any circumstance.

Prepared to be corrected, mind.
 
I took some shots today......

Chain and warp both on foredeck cleat, and then tied down with some line

Foredeckcleat.jpg



Chain goes over roller and warp through fairlead

Stemhead.jpg



Warp is the shorter, so the chain only comes into play if the warp breaks

Mooring.jpg



We can't use a lot of scope as the moorings are placed by the wardens and are all quite close together. That's the way I do it. Others may disagree.
(just above the foredeck cleat, over the water , the small white blob is a new 10 knot sign, several of which have appeared in the past couple of days.
 
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