DennisF
Well-Known Member
Sorry, bit of a rant and a plea for options. My Moody S38 is berthed at Suffolk Yacht Harbour. She was there in a Winter berth when I bought her late last year, and they accepted her berthing application for this year. Due to her length and beam they planned to put her into West Harbour. However, they haven't even put the new pilings into West Harbour yet, let alone the pontoons. They didn't state this was going to be an issue when taking the booking (And money), but today they said they haven't even got the permissions in place so God knows how long they are going to take to sort it out. Thus they have 'temporarily' put her onto a hammerhead between pontoons, just in front of a wide cat, with not enough room to berth without overhanging the hammerhead. They say they have no other berths available until they sort out West Harbour.
Now for the advice needed: The Moody has a 2m draught. It has an autoprop so not much prop walk. The channel near the hammerhead only has sufficient depth at lowish water fairly close to the cat, so the usual approach of going wide of the cat to swing alongside won't work. The hammerhead is too short to use a stern bridle to motor against, and although could be an option to perhaps temporarily stop her "too far" along the hammerhead, the bow blows off quite quickly in wind, and over the weekend in 30kn gusts stopping the boat beyond the cat just blew the bow in to the hammerhead. We got alongside without any damage or drama, but I need to rethink berthing. I'm wondering about whether to go forward beyond the hammerhead and then reverse alongside, with lots of fenders on the stern in case we get pushed onto the cat. She's a heavy old thing, so takes a while to get steerage way astern and also to stop her once going astern, which makes me nervous
. Am I missing other options?
Now for the advice needed: The Moody has a 2m draught. It has an autoprop so not much prop walk. The channel near the hammerhead only has sufficient depth at lowish water fairly close to the cat, so the usual approach of going wide of the cat to swing alongside won't work. The hammerhead is too short to use a stern bridle to motor against, and although could be an option to perhaps temporarily stop her "too far" along the hammerhead, the bow blows off quite quickly in wind, and over the weekend in 30kn gusts stopping the boat beyond the cat just blew the bow in to the hammerhead. We got alongside without any damage or drama, but I need to rethink berthing. I'm wondering about whether to go forward beyond the hammerhead and then reverse alongside, with lots of fenders on the stern in case we get pushed onto the cat. She's a heavy old thing, so takes a while to get steerage way astern and also to stop her once going astern, which makes me nervous
. Am I missing other options?