Mooring Double-Keeled Boat

[afeldma]

In fifteen years of mooring my boat in a tidal inlet, where it settles on the hard twice a day, I have never been able to completely solve the problem of the mooring wrapping itself behind one or another of the keels.

This will occur when the wind and tide are moving in different directions (very common) and the boat settles on top of its own mooring. Depending on the wind, it may float again with the mooring line wrapped, the mooring's chain sawing away at the back of the keel.

Any way to prevent this from happening?

[sarafina]

Throw out a stern anchor to limit drifting to a smaller swing?

[klem]

What do you use as a mooring setup? One common way to solve this problem is to try to make the rode heavy enough that it will tend to fall down away from the keels in normal weather conditions. If you are using a lot of line in the mooring, it may help to switch to chain or to put a kellet on it at the appropriate height.

If you substitute chain for line in your mooring, you need to be very careful about shock loading in storm conditions since chain will not stretch. You need to put an appropriate shock absorber in there somehow (you can really put it anywhere along the rode, you just need to watch for chafe or it wrapping up the anchor when you start putting it at the anchor end). I had a sort of similar situation and dealt with it by running a piece of 3 strand line along the bottom chain (line was a few feet shorter so that it could stretch) to be the shock absorber because there were not pendants to do the job. This is not an ideal fix but may be better than wrapping up the keels.

If you already have short pendants and all chain, then this will not help.

[SSI / NH]

You could use Dyneema Mooring Pendants, they float and will stay on top of the water so they shouldn't get tangled as the water level drops.

google dyneema mooring pendants