Yearly maintenance of swing moorings

Yealm

Yealm

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The team who service our river moorings are great - but it's pretty expensive - £200 for a check, plus more for any repairs/replacements.
Do all boat owners do this every year as a matter of course?
Or could i get away with every other year?
Boat's on the mooring April - October.

Interested to hear what others do (outside the official world of insurance requirements :))
 
We have the bottom sections inspected every other year - and they don't require stuff doing to them every time. The top section we do every year, but it's easy and we do it ourselves.

BUT beware of internet advice! It suits where our mooring is - NW Scotland - and occupied for quite a short season so most of the time it has no lateral force hence all the ground chains and anchors, and most of the riser, spend most of their time buried in anaerobic and non-abrasive mud which isn't the most aggressive environment for low-carbon steel. This may not be your situation (R Yealm? And even there it varies: just inside the bar it's sand with wave action and is abrasive whereas upstream it's probably soft mud).

To inspect the top section - by which I mean upper 2m of riser chain, swivel and associated shackles, and the buoy itself - we use the anchor windlass to haul the buoy out of the water and attach a rope to the riser chain below that. Then lower the buoy and haul up on the rope. That way we get to see the riser below the buoy, and the swivel without tension so can clean it and check for wear. And, if need be, replace bits of it.
 
Our moorings are all lifted every third year. We employ a tug to do this as a bulk lift for economy. This year being a lift year. So if you had a new mooring a year ago you must still get lifted on the lift date to join the cycle of lifts. Moorings are refurbished, new chains & shackles fitted, then re laid for another 3 years.
Every year end & year start, owners are invited to make use of a work boat (owned by a syndicate), for free ( insurance forbids charging). Owners often donate £25-40 per inspection, which goes towards the upkeep of the work boat, or sometimes a charity. They are required to be aboard during inspection. Mooring is winched as high as possible & checked. Any parts replaced as needed.

Cost of lift & lay a complete mooring averages £100, (plus tackle) & this pays for the tug to lift- £55-00. I lay them for free, using my launch & an airbag. The £ 45-00 balance going into our cruiser class fund. This covers cost of the airbags & ancilliary equipment used by the class.
Owners are expected to pay for any mooring gear as required. I supply to most of the owners, cheaper than they can buy themselves, because I bulk buy on their behalf & sell it at almost cost,
 
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There's a book called "Towards Zero Failures in Swinging Moorings" by Jim Izzard which uses a lot a user surveys as well as engineering research at Plymouth University to establish best practice.
 
Mine gets checked every year. If it wasn’t, and my boat came adrift, I think my insurers would regard that as a get out of jail free card.
5 to 7 years seems to be the norm before something needs replaced up here.
 
I'm in Portsmouth harbour on a drying mooring. I get it checked every couple of years, but keep an eye on what I can see - the top of the riser, swivel and pennant in between times. In my experience, it's the pennant that wears fastest, which can happen frighteningly fast, especially if you aren't using the boat much, as we hadn't for two or three years. It really can sneak up on you. The wear tends to happen where the links meet, so it can be difficult to see until it's getting bad. I've swapped my knackered chain pennant for a pair of 18mm polysteel jobs, so I'll see how they do. The cat loves them, just sitting quietly, but even the monohull we had before swung around less.

There were two boats went walkabout from our club over the autumn and winter storms and both were write-offs, so it really isn't something to neglect.
 
I was on a club mooring that the club checked and I checked just before the start of every year. Failures still happened (v. occasionally) so the club has upped the size of mooring chain from v. thing to ‘impressive’ and there’s no longer any failures.

But at £200 plus any repair, what is the price of your nights sleep when it’s bumpy, blowing a force 10 and your boat is on its own. Just spend the money, preferably just before the start of the season. Your peace of mind is at stake.
 
As we are in a drying harbour, and have fore/aft mooring, so checking moorings is relatively simple, checked my chains yesterday , replaced all shackles as a standard bit of maintenance, and attached fore and aft mooring strops (18m Octoplait).
Usually I replace one length of the 4 lengths of chain (10m x 10mm long link) each year so that none are more than 4 years old, they get a real battering when we have North Westerlies, so it seems to me a sensible routine.
I didn’t do the replacement procedure this year as lockdown changed things a bit but will start again next year.
 
Motor_Sailor said:
There's a book called "Towards Zero Failures in Swinging Moorings" by Jim Izzard which uses a lot a user surveys as well as engineering research at Plymouth University to establish best practice.
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Yes, I have a copy. Excellent booklet but it is more of a list of practice at a few places in the SW (Mylor, Percuil, Fowey etc) and about the equipment, sizes, shackle and swivel choices and materials than about frequency of inspection. It also doesn't attempt to analyse different types of bottom, which I think makes a huge difference: abrasion is your enemy. Lifting, as per Daydream believer's excellent post, may not be best when the ground system is not blocks but 2 or more anchors which have dug-in: if local practice has found that they last for many years if well buried then it's probably better to leave them dug in for several years, only checking the attachment between ground chain and riser, and doing that by diving.

This photo illustrates the danger point in an abrasive area: the chain was worn right through and rejoined with a shackle, which was too small anyway. In contrast, the anchor and the shackle to it were in perfect condition.

I tried to contact the owner, but he wasn't interested (bloody yachties, what do you know?..). It failed only 3 days after I took these photos and the fishing boat was wrecked on the rocks.

Picture 1.jpg


Picture 2.jpg
 
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Yealm said:
The team who service our river moorings are great - but it's pretty expensive - £200 for a check, plus more for any repairs/replacements.
Do all boat owners do this every year as a matter of course?
Or could i get away with every other year?
Boat's on the mooring April - October.

Interested to hear what others do (outside the official world of insurance requirements :))
Click to expand...
I've just moved to the Tamar, because it is a military port and I'm quite near a lot of the Gray Fleet annual inspection is compulsory.

If you are elsewhere it's your risk, speak to your insurance company.
 
In my club, we have a mooring barge and every member is attending lying/retrieving/ inspection twice a year. The barge team consists 4-5 people, 2 persons are knowledgeable and not doing heavy lifting, the rest rotates as they have to lift anchors to/from boxes and a lot of heavy chains. On a good day, we can lay/retrieve 12-16 moorings. And those are deep water moorings - drying ones are inspected by members on low water. The barge itself is maintained by club members.

I would say that 200 GBP is not a bad deal, as its a commercial operation and you say the team is great. Its season and not an easy job, so there has to be some incentive. Maintaining equipment is probably not cheap, too. Not sure how much would they charge for lying/retrieving mooring.
 
You need to service to a schedule, 2 years is too much. Ours is one year but a lot can happen in 2 years. 2 years then becomes 3. Servicing a mooring is cheap in comparison to having yachts on beaches (taking out a few other yachts before they get to the beach).

It takes 2 men to service a deep mooring comfortably, an hours work, including travel time between moorings. What is an hourly rate in the UK. The facilities, barge, has to be serviced, the lifting tackle tested and approved annually, The contractor needs to be insured for the work he is conducting. The actual cost of the parts that might need replaced is nominal. But stg200 is not expensive for a years peace of mind.

Jonathan
 
Neeves said:
You need to service to a schedule, 2 years is too much. Ours is one year but a lot can happen in 2 years. 2 years then becomes 3. Servicing a mooring is cheap in comparison to having yachts on beaches (taking out a few other yachts before they get to the beach).

It takes 2 men to service a deep mooring comfortably, an hours work, including travel time between moorings. What is an hourly rate in the UK. The facilities, barge, has to be serviced, the lifting tackle tested and approved annually, The contractor needs to be insured for the work he is conducting. The actual cost of the parts that might need replaced is nominal. But stg200 is not expensive for a years peace of mind.

Jonathan
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This is a mite sanctimonious. I do not advocate any particular period between inspections - I said it depends on where you are and to beware of internet advice!- but where I have a mooring in NW Scotland the harbour association advises it every other year. Are they wrong? The OP asked a question: "what is practice where you are?"

I know - you've posted excellent photos before - that your mooring is in a very high abrasion area hence very frequent inspection and replacement is called for. But we don't know what the substrate or sea conditions are like at the OP's mooring.
 
jdc said:
This is a mite sanctimonious. I do not advocate any particular period between inspections - I said it depends on where you are and to beware of internet advice!- but where I have a mooring in NW Scotland the harbour association advises it every other year. Are they wrong? The OP asked a question: "what is practice where you are?"

I know - you've posted excellent photos before - that your mooring is in a very high abrasion area hence very frequent inspection and replacement is called for. But we don't know what the substrate or sea conditions are like at the OP's mooring.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure its sanctimonious. I think we could get away with a 2 year service on Pittwater - but then some people forget, postpone and 2 years becomes 3 - and then there are problems. An annual service is surprisingly easy to remember, 2 years should be easy - except the 2 years slips to ..... and we return to have a few yachts on a beach having taken out a few stanchions, some gel coat on the way.

Because people forget or ignore the requirement (or recommendation) for an annual service and every strong wind event would be closed with a few vessels on the local beaches the heavy hand of bureaucracy has had to be used - produce proof of service and your lease is extended. I've spoken with out mooring contractor and his estimate is that the gear used here would fail at about 3 years - plus or minus. Noticeably the vessels who moorings failed were invariably uninsured.

The conditions of my mooring area are documented, as you accurately mention (you have a commendable memory). The OP is freely available to interrogate any of the information provided by me or anyone else - that's the function of the forum.. The OP's mooring area is unknown, or unknown to me, so I've documented my mooring, provided photographs, described the sea bed and described my idea of a service period - what the OP needs to do is compare my documentation, the search function is free asking doe clarification is well supported, with his conditions and make his own decision.

You have no idea of the number of people.often the same people, who criticise me for being repetitive and wordy.

Take care, stay safe

Jonathan
 
Mine gets inspected yearly by our boat yard which is required by insurance company. Bits get replaced as necessary. No boats adrift after recent storms.
 
In Portland Harbour an annual check , photo and record of rising chain is normal for insurance purposes. Ground chain and weight every 5 yrs.
 
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