Mooring to a buoy

[SHADS]

The Sailing club we are joining doesn't have slips. Well in the little town there is a Marina, but slightly expensive for three - four months. However they have mooring buoys. My question is what exactly do you need to tie up to the buoy they have. The boat is only 22 feet long. Does anyone have a link or a diagram on how to tie up to one of these?

 

[Terry Cox]

Do it all the time. We have a bow cleat on each...

side. Before I grab the buoy ring with the boat hook I have the loop of the mooring line on one of the cleats. I do a double wrap through the ring then cleat the bitter end of the line on the other cleat. Always holds and very reliable for our needs.Terry

 

[Joe11688]

Mooring to a mooring ball

I think that your best bet is to talk to the Town Harbor master. Most towns have Harbor master Rules and Regulations that specify the mini um thickness rope for your size boat, along with the length of the pendant line. I can only give you an idea of how we moor at our club so that you can get a general knowledge of how it's done in other places. I belong to a Yacht Club in Dighton Massachusetts and although the club owns the 29 moorings, we have to go by the rules and regs of our local harbor master. Our mooring Balls are the new type where the chain goes through the mooring ball and a large shackle is attached to the 3/8" chain on top of the ball. My sailboat is a 22 foot also, and I'm using a 1/2 inch Nylon 3 strand rope pendant line. I do all my own rope splicing. A galvanized, or Stainless Steel thimble is added to a spliced eye on this pendant line, and I use a 1/2 inch shackle to attach the pendant line to the shackle on the top of the ball. The thimble protects the spliced eye from chaffing where the shackle connects the pendant line to the mooring ball shackle. The length of the pendant line is determined by a rule of thumb formula that goes; The distance from the bow chalk straight down to the water line, X 3.5, + whatever you need to tie to the bow cleat. This is the minimum distance that your boat needs to be from the mooring ball. Some mooring balls have the hardware built into them, where you have a rod with and eye on the top and the bottom, that goes through the ball instead of the chain. In this case, the chain is connected to the eye under the mooring ball and you would need to attach your pendant line shackle to the chain under the ball. There's and eye at the top of the ball, and under no circumstance should you ever attach your pendant line to it. Some boatyards have moorings with 3/4 inch pendant lines attached to them which is probably too large to fit over your bow cleat. In this case, you tie your pendant line to the 3/4 eye splice with an "anchor bend" and add a float to you pendant line. Some people like to use and eye splice for the bow cleat. I don't. I tie my pendant line to my bow cleat with the cleat knot. Some people like to attach a pickup stick to their mooring line so that they can grab hold of the mooring line. I don't. I take about 3 or 4 styro-foam fish trap floats and thread them on my pendant line, and tie a figure eight knot at the end, so that they don't come out. When I sail up to my mooring, I walk up to the bow with my adjustable boat hook, and grab on to my pendant line. The floats keep the pendant line from sinking and wrapping around the mooring chain, and this is why I use them. Anyway, this gives you a pretty rough idea of how it's done where we are, but I think that you need to get the rules from the town. Ask them what they use for moorings and the size of the mooring chain. Our moorings are 630 LBS concrete blocks, with 10 feet of 1 1/8 inch Navy chain, 5/8 inch swivel, and about 10 feet of 3/8 inch galvanized chain for the top chain. Your town may use mushroom anchors which are OK. They may require you to use some kind of swivel at the end of your pendant line at the chain, or a secondary pendant line. I don't know. Rules vary from place to place. I hope that I was able to be of some help to you. Good luck, and Happy Sailing!Joe

 

[Mike]

On the ball year round

I have an O'day 25. When I bought it it was in a slip at the club. There is a list and I wan't on it for slips. I moved to a mooring and have been there 4 years. I prefer the mooring. It seems easier on the boat as well as it swings free no banging back and forth in heavy wind or wake.My mooring lines (2) are attached by shackle to the ball. I only day sail so I tie my dingy to the mooring lines while sailing so I don't need a float. The lines then have eyes on the free end. I sail up, grab the line with the boat hook and slip the eye over the bow cleat (one on each side). Gas on my boat lasts forever. Sail off, sail on.I don't go to my boat every weekend. I don't go out and just hang out on the boat. Many do. For that situation a slip is a must. I only go out to sail. So the mooring works for me. Still have time to socialize before or after.Enjoy!Mike

 

[Scott]

Keep in mind ...

Joe may be located in an open area where winds and waves can be far more severe than you are likely to ever encounter. My 27' Starwind is located on a small lake and waves are never an issue. We can get some pretty good blows but our location is pretty well protected, especially from the northwest where the strongest winds come from.With that in mind, I just use 2 half-inch nylon mooring pennants (15') that I purchase with the loop pre-spliced on one end. I simply luggage tag the looped ends to the eye on top of the mooring and I do slip one of those water-toy noodles that you can buy at any dimestore or hardware store over the pennant so that the line floats. It helps if you wrap some electrical tape around the ends to keep the rope from splitting the noodle.I cleat the 2 pennants at both bow cleats and leave at least a 7' tail so I am using about 8' of the pennant. The purpose of the noodles is to keep the line from wrapping around the mooring chain and they also keep the boat from rubbing up against the mooring when the lake is like glass. Before I used those noodles, I would constantly find that the boat spins around the mooring when the breeze is very light and shifty, and the pennants get wrapped around the mooring chain causing a huge nuisance.I never have a problem with chafe, so I don't bother with the thimbles or chafe protection on the line. This is probably because I occasionally (once a year at most) buy new mooring lines.I have wondered why Joe says that the mooring balls with an attachment for the chain on the bottom and an eye on the top must have the mooring pennants attached below the mooring ball. If they are linked by a rod through the ball, what is the problem with the pennant being attached on top? It seems like a nuisance to me to have the lines attached below, and nobody in our mooring field does it this way, although I know that this is the customary method. I suppose the danger is failure of the rod inside the ball, but how real is that concern? Maybe nobody worries about it in our field because none of the boats are any larger than our 5,200 pound boat and we don't have the heavy wave action.I am surprised that he says they use only 650 pound blocks. Mine needed to be a good 2,700 pounds of concrete (sitting on a sand bottom, not buried in mud) and some boats on smaller blocks have dragged in the most exposed wind locations.

 

[Dick of Sylvan]

Bow Eye

SHADS: If your 22 ft boat has a bow eye for trailering, you might try putting a shackle from a line on the mooring directly onto the bow eye. That way you avoid chafe and the pull during winds is straight inline with the hull and lower than from on deck. And use a nylon tie to keep the fastening bolt of the shackle from coming loose when you are away. Attaching shackle and releasing it is easy from your dingy as you come and go. RK

 

[Dick of Sylvan]

Bow Eye

SHADS: If your 22 ft. boat has a bow eye for trailering, you can attach a line from the mooring onto the bow eye with a shackle. That way you avoid chafe and the pull during wind is from a good low angle and straingt in line with the hull. Probably best to splice the shackle with one of those metal eyes, and then secure the bolt of the shackle when away with a tie thru its hole. Easy to do when coming and going with your dingy. A second line rather loose to a bow cleat is convenient before and after setting the shackle. RK

 

[Joe11688]

Mooring balls

Scott, You're right. I moor my boat on the Taunton River, and we get strong South West winds along with tides and currents that flow in and out. We have some protection, but not a lot. Actually, according to the Town of Dighton Harbor Master Rules and Regs, my 22 foot sailboat should be using a 5/8 inch pendant line, but we've talked to the Harbormaster and explained to him that the jam cleats on 22s and O'Day 25 boats, are too small for 5/8 line, so he said that he wouldn't give us a hassle on it. However, the minimum size pendant line for your 27 Starwind would be a 3/4 inch pendant line in that town, but I'm sure that he'd let a person get away with a 5/8 inch. As I pointed out there are two types of mooring balls; One ball has a PVC pipe in the center for the chain to go through, but the other ball has what is known as "Mooring Ball with Hardware" , which means a 3/8 inch hot dipped galvanized rod going through the ball with an eye on top and a threaded eye nut for the bottom. The eye on top, allows a person to grab the ball with a boat hook to check the chain and shackle which is attached to the eye nut under the ball. The rod by itself, is only strong enough to hold up the mooring chain and not made for holding a boat, at least that's what it says in the directions when you buy this type of mooring ball. You could probably get away with tying on to it if you're going to use it temporarily while your sitting in your boat having your lunch, but you never want to leave your boat on it unattended. There is one thing that I forgot to mention that is very important and it has to do with the shackle. Any time you connect a shackle to a mooring chain, you want to tighten the shackle pin down good and tight. The head of the pin has a hole through it, and you want to "mouse" or wire this pin to the side of the shackle. You can use Stainless Steel wire, or Galvanized, or even a heavy duty plastic zip tie. As for a secondary pendant line; My friend Walter made up a shorter line using 1/2 inch 3 strand Nylon rope. He made an splice on one end, and he splice a thimble on the other end for a Stainless Steel snap hook. When he leaves his boat on the mooring, he takes the end of the rope with the eye splice, and inserts it through the mooring shackle, and runs the other snap shackle end through it. Then he takes the snap shackle, and snaps it to his bow eye. When he rows out to get his boat, this is the first line that he takes completely off, before he climbs aboard his boat to shove off. I've got a link to a mooring ball on the West Marine site. Check it out.Joe

 

[Nereussailor]

mooring ball

I used to keep my boat on a mooring ball. It was in a river off of Lake Winnebago where there was a pretty strong current at times. I was taught to never use the bow eye for mooring. I made a short bridle that was kept on the mooring ball and put a float with a fiberglass rod running through it on the end of the bridle. (Pennant) On one end of the bridle was an eyesplice with a thimble. This end was shackled to the mooring ball with a shackle and seizing wire. On the other end was just an eyesplice. This eyesplice was fed through the foredeck cleat and brought back over the cleat's horns. If you want to get really technical, you could splice a Y and hook to both cleats for a more even pull on the boat, but mine worked fine for two years with little chafe. I used 1/2" three strand and my boat was a Mac 26S

 

[Warren]

Mooring

I've been mooring my O'Day 22 for 34 years. I prefer a single 5/8" pendant attached directly to the swivel that is between the mooring chain and the lower ring of the mooring ball/float. It is very important that you attach to the "chain" and not the ball. You should have good size, well backed cleat on the foredeck. Have good long pendant 22'-25'. Come up from the mooring through a bow chock, tie off to the cleat and then for extra security tie a bowline around the mast.Good Luck!

 

[Joe11688]

Mooring pendant lines

As Warren pointed out. The pendant line needs to be attached directly to the chain with a shackle moused with wire. I prefer to tie my pendant line to my bow cleat which is located on my O'Day 222 where chalks would be mounted on other sailboats. I also prefer one pendant line with no other back-up lines. Too many lines on a mooring can sometimes get wrapped around the ground tackle in a river where you have constant tides and currents that flow both ways. The lines can get chaffed, and the boat can get loose. I've seen this happen to other people's boats myself. Although I should be using a 5/8 inch pendant line, I've had no problem with 1/2 inch because I can tie it to my cleat easier than the 5/8 inch. Also, one of our members uses 1/2 inch on his O'Day 25 for the same reason, and his boat is heavier than mine. As for the mooring blocks; Most of our blocks are in the 630 weight range, with the exception of a few that weigh in a 1000 and over. Some of our moorings are large iron industrial gears, and train wheels. Most of our mooring block have a large Navy chain with a link thickness of 1 1/8 inches, and are 10 foot long. A large swivel is connected to this chain, and a length of 3/8 or 1/2 inch chain is connected to the other side of the swivel which connects to the mooring ball. In any event, our mooring field has deep mud. The pipes that hold our docks are 3 1/2 inch galvanized at 22 feet long. About 10 to 15 feet of this pipe can be sunk into the mud with two people baring down on large pipe wrenches connected to the pipe while standing on the dock. The mooring blocks usually sink into the mud after we set them, and they're not easy to lift when we go to lift them with a hoist. We always need to apply upward pressure and wait while the mooring slowly lifts out of the mud, then pull it right out the rest of the way. The weight of the mooring really depends on what the river bottom is made up of, and the size and weight of the vessel, as does the size of the ground tackle. It varies from place to place. If you prefer to use and eye splice on your pendant line to go over your bow cleat, that's okay. Personally, I would tie a smaller diameter braid line of 1/4" to the eye splice and on to the bow cleat, to keep the eye splice from coming off my cleat.