A very near miss.....

[Olly75]

A quick story about why you shouldnt be lazy…..
I just pulled into Manihi Atol in the Tuamotu islands after crossing from the Marquesas (its was a
sleigh ride over) and went to anchor in front of the village. As we were preparing to drop the anchor
we got called by a french boat who suggested we use the available mooring ball as there was coral
on the bottom. I asked and was reassured by him that the mooring balls were in good condition and
he had been on them a week with no problems. So we hooked onto the one available and settled
down about 20 metres from the small reef protecting the dinghy anchorage in front of the village. I
thought to myself that I should go down and check the line, but the conditions were good and I had
been reassured. You may be able to see where this is going….
So over night the wind picked up and was gusting 25 kts, but no problem the boat was riding well.
The next morning we went into the village to buy some much needed beer and chocolate before
going to dive the pass in the afternoon. So after lunch we got the gear ready and I finally took the
opportunity to dive the mooring line. We have a line set up as a bridle which ran from the cleats on
the bow through the toe rail and down to the mooring ball. As I swam to the bow I noticed that one
of the brackets round the hole in the toe rail had popped off over night and was now at the end of
the bridle. I pushed it back up and one of my crew tied it off. I pottered down the line and to my
horror discovered that one and a half strands of the 1” triple braid had been worn through on a piece
of coral, so swam over to the other mooring line that was now vacant and checked it out, it was fine.
So surfaced and got back to the boat, and told the crew we needed to move over pronto. It was still
gusting 20 kts and I didn’t want to loose the fairlead bracket when we released the bridle so I got
the crew to hitch a line on it to take the load so we could release the bridle and recover the bracket.
One of my crew, Nina who’s about four foot tall and not exactly well built attached the hitch and
gave it a tug to test it, at which point the mooring ball shot out the water. The line had snapped.
By the time I had said ‘f**k me’ and got to the cockpit to start the engine we had blown 180
degrees and were now about 10 metres away and facing onto the reef. After some shouting of get
that f***ing bridle out of the water and pull in the slack on the dinghy I had her in full reverse and
we managed to pull away. If we had been off the boat or even down below it would have got very
bad, very quickly.
Lesson learnt, never be lazy, check everything and don’t take someone else’s word for it. I suspect I
have used all my chips up and lady luck won’t be as generous next time…..

[JPA Cate]

Scary story.

If you are somewhere where you HAVE to pick up an unknown mooring, yes, inspecting is a good idea. Sometimes, you can connect your line to the chain portion, if the rope is sun-rotted, or chafed.

So many boats on moorings have problems, one way and another, we mostly avoid them.

Glad you were there and able to deal with the problem. Glad Lady Luck smiled once again.

Ann

[Cayuse51]

I would say you were very lucky. It is very easy to assume the mooring is good, but I think you need to dive on it when you can. I don't remember many moorings in the Tuamotus. We anchored when we were there. We floated our anchor chain in Fakarava to avoid hitting coral. While I certainly prefer my anchor, I think moorings are the future in places with coral or grass and lots of cruising boats. Anchors and chains tear up the bottom. They ruin coral and are hard on grass. In the Caribbean, they have had success in getting turtles to return to places where they now use moorings and the turtle grass is growing again like the Tobago Cays and St. Barths. They also allow a higher density of boats in an anchorage.

[svmariane]

Man... close one! The stuff of nightmares.

Lots more satisfying to read "ä very near miss" than a post that begins "So my boat sunk while we were"...