Mooring Advice

[Bluenose]

I have been keeping my boat on a mooring for the past three season and I have a few issues that I would appreciate some advice on.

First, quite often the combination of wind and current pushes or traps my boat against the mooring ball. Sometimes this results in a tangled mooring line and abrasion between the ball and the hull when they rub together. Is there a good method to keep the boat away from the mooring and prevent tangling of the mooring line?

Last season, for the first time, birds discovered my boat. I don't know what finally made it an attractive perch but I would like it to become unattractive again. It looks like their favorite use is using the mast and boom as perches and using the fore and aft decks for the buffet line. Is there anything I can do to reclaim my boat from them?

Thanks, Bill

[Case]

Do you use a hard shell buoy?

Reason why I ask is because... its my observation that hard shell buoys with the pennant coming out from the top is MUCH more prone to tangling. Especially so if using 2 pennants.

One other advice I have if you do have an inflatable buoy and have tangle problems... attach the pennant to an extra large sling link or a ginormous swivel - one at least 3/4" diameter. Doing this way lets the pennant to rattle around more loosely without binding, which causes kinks and tangles in the pennant. I had some problems one season and adding a large sling link solved my problems instantly.


- Case

[preserved_killick]

I'll second the idea that hard shell bouys with the pendant attached to the top are a pain. I was on one last season and fought it the whole summer. It was always tangling. Once I added a second pendant for a storm, and within a few days it was tightly wrapped up, and one pendant was nearly sawed through. The guy on the boat next to me, ended up repainting his topsides die to abrasion between the ball and his hull. It appeared that the swivel under the ball didn't function with this setup possibly die to binding.

-jeff

[Maine Sail]

I'll third "hard shells"!

It has come to my attention over the last few years that the new "hard shell" mooring balls where the pendant connects to the top run a significantly higher risk of the pendant wrapping the chain than previously thought.

Just last week in winds of 18-30 knots I counted no less than 7 "hard shell" balls with the pendants wrapped around the chain.

I actually watched this happen the other night in calm weather and my observation is as follows.

In calm weather the boat swings around the ball and the pendant goes slack. The pendants then gets caught under the ball and wraps the chain. If the boat continues to move around the ball it can wrap three or four times! I observed two things that could or are causing this:

#1 The mooring ball sits too high in the water due to either a light top chain or too big a ball for the weight of the chain and it makes it easy for the pendant to get "under" the "equator" of the ball and then when the boat yanks the pendant it shoots straight down under the ball instead of up and over it.


Heavier chain and or a smaller ball, better matched to the chain weight at low tide, would get the ball sitting lower in the water and may minimize this occurrence.

#2 Any pendant coming off the top of the ball, or underneath for that matter, should have floats laced about 12" to 16" apart, out to about 4 feet or so ,so the pendant can not sink under the ball in calm conditions. With hard shells this would only work with a "low floating" ball and even with floats some still wrap high floating balls!

I took this picture of my neighbors boat.. I tried un-successfully in 18-30 knots to untangle it but it had wrapped twice.. It would not have taken much more wind to chafe and snap these dual pendants..

I think a large swivel about two feet bellow the ball would let the pendant un-twist from the chain if this happened.


My pendant connects under the ball to the top of a 1" swivel, and is laced with oval shaped floats, in the last 13 years my pendant has never once wrapped the chain using the under ball/swivel connection. Because my ball is soft shell and I CLEAN IT & TREAT IT WITH 303 AEROSPACE PROTECTANT it has NEVER scratched my Awlgriped hull... Letting the ball get dirty and oxidized will lead to scratching!! 303 WORKS!

I'm having a tough time seeing any benefit to a through the ball set up based on what I've witnessed over the last three years. From a severely scratched brand new Awlgrip job from the top shackle rubbing the hull to LOTS of pendant wrapping of the chain I too am perplexed as to the benefit..?.

[Tim]

I hate hard shell buoys for all the reasons everyone else has already listed--line wrapping, hull damage, annoying banging against the hull, etc.

Inflatable balls have their own issues from time to time, but in general are vastly preferable.

[Bluenose]

Thanks everyone for the advice and info. We are required, by law, to have a hard shelled 24 inch mooring ball. In addition we are no longer allowed to use chain on the bottom. Our current approved system is a screw anchor into the bottom with a 1 inch nylon line with a submerged float and a short length of chain to attach the ball (nothing gets to drag along the bottom). This seems to guarantee that the ball floats high and wraps the pendants. It sounds like, by using two pendants, I have been maximizing my chances for wraps and it shows.

From what I am reading here, the best solution is to attach a single pendant to the swivel under the ball and well buoy the pendant with floats. Do I have that right?

I still wonder if there are any great ideas to fend off the boat from the mooring.

[Case]

Try this one thing... Put on many, many floats on the pennant - sufficient buoyancy so that it is impossible for the pennant to sink underneath the buoy. See if that works. If it doesn't work, put the pennant under the buoy.

I don't have any other advice. Sorry to hear that laws require chains not to touch the bottom. Sometimes the environmentalists go way too far.

Using hardshell buoys ought be optional. I am almost absolutely certain its non-boaters who mandated the use of these hardshells... Maybe somebody ought give one of those bureaucrats a nice yacht with lovely awlgrip. Then after a nice summer banging against a hardshell buoy, bill that bureaucrat for an awlgrip re-paint. Their tune will change awful quick...

- Case

[Steve'O]

I have the same hard buoy chain thrpugh the middle setup. The boat is still on the hard so I have no experience with it yet. Having read many of the criticisms that others have listed, I plan to run the mooring line through one of those brightly colored "pool noodles". Hopefully the floating line plus the added stiffness of the noodle will prevent wrapping.

[bhartley]

We use swim noodles (cut to about 18") on our pennants and it helps enormously. The hole was too small to thread the existing splice through so I just split them open and tied them on. Worked just fine.

Bly

[Quetzalsailor]

We moor on our marina's equipment in a creek with very little tidal current. Their stuff is: screw pile, chain, an eggish-shape buoy with swivel and eye, a single fiber 3/4 or 1 1/4" pennant (depending on what they think the boat needs). Over 10 years, one chain has failed and freed the boat; very few of the 20 or so moorings have failed to swivel so very few have tangled or wound up pennants. The egg-shaped buoy tends to hit the boats along or below the boottop. Some of the buoys flop over and float with the swivel capable of banging up the boat above the boottop.

Bottom line: get the egg-shaped buoy and pad the swivel. Adding floats to the pennant sounds good, if you own the pennant. Dual pennants that I've seen seem to impair the swivel and end up wrapped on each other.

I've been tempted to yoke the marina's pennant to each side of Q to calm down her tendency to yaw. I have not done so because of confusing the liability. If I use the marina's equipment then there's less argument about whose fault a failure is.

[John, CD28]

I've gone back to using the blue foam square floats. They are softer on the hull, more of a squeak than a bang, and the shackle never gets near the hull. Pennants do still wrap under the float, but not as much as they did with a round ball.

I tried a hard plastic ball with recessed cup top, but the hard shell banging would drive you mad.

John

[Bluenose]

I like the idea of the "pool noodle" and may give that a shot.

I am going to check out how serious the county is about having hard plastic mooring buoys. If I can I am going to replace it with a soft one. What type are you guys using. I found these at go2marine. They are fenders / buoys.



I am toying with the idea of using a soft buoy for the summer sailing season and then reinstalling my hard shelled buoy for the winter. A bit extra work but then I "get" to inspect all the shackles and I am really, really motivated to try to protect the hull.

[Hirilondë]

A bit extra work but then I "get" to inspect all the shackles

What ever it takes to get you to inspect your gear every year is a good idea. We pull, clean, repaint and repair our bridals every year. We pull and inspect the mushrooms and chains every 3 and repair/replace as needed. Btw, we have added foam floats to the bridals and it seems to help with the tangling a fair bit.

[BALANCE]

I just addressed this same issue a few weeks ago. I happened to own a plethora of those mini mini fenders - I lined a hard dinghy with them, like a launch to protect the old boat. So I took four of them (total of 8) and attached them to each line coming from the top of my hard mooring ball with space in between. For two weeks every time I came to the boat the lines were free until last weekend. My lines are 20' long with an eye. So, now I have pulled the lines in further so that the 4th fender closest to the boat is about the last bit of line that actually lies in the water. The line is cleated to the boat leaving abot 3 feet of line, including the eye lying on deck.

I'm hoping this will solve this problem for good and that the shorter line will not come back to bite me. Not sure how the length of the line is factored in a mooring set up. Anybody have an idea?

[BALANCE]

UPDATE: This is my 5th season and I have still not resolved this problem. The fender thing got ixnayed that same season in 2008 and I ended up putting pipe insulation on each pendant. With the lines shortened up, in heavy weather the sprit could/would have hit the ball if there was weather, I saw it almost happen and was on the boat and able to let out the lines (not easy) so I never again shortened the lines, all 20' are out. The insulation kept the lines afloat well, BUT, as Maine Sail so eloquently illustrated the when it happens, after that what happens for me is the lines are now wrapped around the one or two or more times and floating, then the wind or the current picks up and pulls the boat back and this pulls the floating line down under the ball and tight against the chain.

Is it possible that this problem is specifically prominent to heavy boats with long bowsprits? The sprit requires longer lines than other boats....

I thought I had outwitted mother nature a few seasons ago by connecting the two (pipe insulated) pendants together starting at the ball going towards the boat for about 4'. This worked for a while but not forever. Each year the insulation has to be replaced and this year the wrapping has happened quite frequently already and it's only June. I've been on the hunt for advice and was eventually led by Yale Cordage to a guy at Hamilton Marine who was going to ask around as he was unaware of this happening in his harbor in Maine, this is what he came back with as a response that suggests the type of ball is not the cullprit. I bolded one sentence that I can't quite follow...tell me what I'm missing?

"I asked a few employees here if they had experience with the hard shell buoys. One, who also runs a double pendant, said he had exactly the same trouble and attributed it to the double pendant. His were 3-strand and he resolved the problem by lacing the pendants together once they cleared the bow. A second fellow, who has an inflatable buoy with a swivel underneath, joined in saying he had chain wrap running a double and switched to a single and had no more problems. So maybe we are focusing on the wrong thing. One of our riggers happened to be working on a double yale pendant...set up just like yours with a ring...and the rigger had taped pipe insulation around both pendants, joining them, starting at the thimbles and going 3' toward the boat end. Then he had two more taped sections 1' long, again joining the pendants together, evenly spaced between the 3' taping and where the two pendants would clear the bow. The design came from a customer who was having chain wrap problems. This could easily be done from a tender at little expense. When it is time to replace the pendants you might want to consider a single, say, 1 1/4" pendant. If the double continues to wrap, you're not really better protected than from a single system that doesn't wrap. However you go, I still advise a swivel. Good luck

At this point the only thing I have not yet tried but recently read in another forum while researching this was to put shock cord on the pendants that hook to the tip of the sprit when moored. Shock cord is attached to pendant straight down from the sprit when the pendants are fully extended with no stretch. The shock cord would do its job only when the lines are slack. I wonder, though, if the cord would not wander from where it is attached at the pendant.

Whew, this is long winded and I apologize but last October I watch my boat (from land) potentially meet its maker in that October storm...my worst nightmare, the lines were wrapped under the ball and the boat was hobby horsing as only a Westsail can do...pounding for hours. She survived, but it was pure luck. I love that girl and it would break my heart to loose her when I feel there must be a solution (besides a slip).

[LazyGuy]

Gilman Corporation

http://www.gilmancorp.com/Mooring_.html

Makes a great sturdy styrofoam float that will not mar the boat's topsides. There is also a little recess in the top to coil your pennant. They ain't cheap but they also work as winter sticks so it saves a painful procedure of the change out in the fall just remove the pennant. Then do the inspection in the spring. The website does not give you a good picture of what you are getting but they are growing very popular and look like the top half of a white barrel with a blue reflective stripe as is required for a legal mooring.

Now that I have gone back, I remember that the original post was about required hardshell buoys. Maybe it is time to go to the harbor master and ask for consideration for a change to the requirements. No one wants to make problems for beautiful boats.

[BALANCE]

I apologize for not coming back sooner to share this but I found the solution shortly after my last post. I found it in some random forum - I doubt I could find it again.

First, it's worth noting that this 'problem' only seems relevant to heavy displacement boats with large bow sprits. The solution was to tie some shock cord to the two mooring lines and attach it to the end of the sprit. The shock cord should meet the lines (which are bound together up to a certain point ) straight down from the end of the sprit assumeing the lines are completely taught between the boat and the ball. My lines are bound up to this point, where the shock cord reaches the line.
This took about 10 minutes to do and two months later, not a single incident. Finally!! :)