What are you using for your mooring? A mushroom anchor? What size (lbs)? Or is it the helical screw type or other? Just curious. Keeping the boat attached is one aspect but the other is keeping the anchor bedded in the bottom and not dragging.
Scope is still important and many mooring fields don't have much allowing more boats to be crammed in the space. Another thing to consider is boats with swing keels. I had a boat next to me after hurricane Bob that ended up upside down with the mast jammed in the bottom and the outboard motor submerged. It was a really nice small boat, maybe 22 feet. The swing keel was raised so it didn't have any stability in the large waves and wind and flipped right over.
We have three moorings.
The one at the club is a 600 pound mushroom with the bell 6' into the bottom. It stands vertically and has been screwed in to the substrate over the past ten years. This is the ideal substrate for a big bell/mushroom mooring. My mooring guy is never allowed to remove it for servicing and that type of imbecilic behavior, which many municipalities actually mandate, is simply STOOPID :cussing: for a setting type mooring. A proper set on a mushroom, in the right bottom, can take a year or two. Mine was screwed in with the barge until the bell was fully submerged. A mushroom should NEVER lie on its side. If it does it is simply the wrong substrate for a mushroom mooring.
That particular mooring uses the bottom chain shown below and then converts to 3/4" top chain. This bottom chain will easily last 15 years or more. The top chain is replaced every 3-4 years & swivels approx every two....
My storm mooring, in front of the neighborhood, is approx 10,000 pounds of Maine granite with a 1.5" staple. She is long, wide and and low similar to this one, only MUCH bigger:
The shape of a dead weight mooring is critical. Long, low, wide and flat is best. Ours is now below the mud surface of the bottom with the staple barely proud. That mooring uses 35' of USCG/USN chain with the cross bar links. It weighs approx 20 pounds per foot. The top chain on that mooring is also 3/4" long link mooring chain. I know from my mooring guys dive report that it takes over 40 knots for me to even straighten the chain on our storm mooring (not lift it just straighten it on the bottom). If we move this mooring with a 36' boat the world will no longer be here.....
The third mooring is also in front of the house and is for guests. 500 pound mushroom similarly set up to the YC mooring...
When I was a kid our cove was very, very exposed and my lobster boat rode to an old granite grist mill wheel that weighed perhaps 12-15 thousand pounds. It was the old mooring for the old USCG life saving station, which was abandoned in the 1950's...
I discovered the location of the mooring through old photos of my mothers showing the cove with the USCG recuse boats moored to it. I dove the rough location for three days & finally found the abandoned granite wheel. I used it for about 15 years and survived a hurricane and multiple Nor'Easters....... I am a pretty big fan of Maine granite for a dead weight mooring...
My intent with moorings is that the bow of the boat rips off before the mooring system fails.....
