How to moor one's yacht in a port to survive a bigger swell

[Sailogy]

I'm going to keep my Beneteau Oceanis 40 moored throughout the winter. The problem is that sometimes in my port there is a big swell. In recent years the swell force has resulted in the detatchment of cleats off hulls of moored yachts. Usually, people tie the lazy line to one of the bow cleats.

I thought it could be a better idea to distribute the force by connecting the lazy line to both bow cleats forming a "Y" shape configuration.
Can you help and suggest exactly which knots and lines I should use regardless of using a mooring compensator? Is it better to tie two separate mooring lines to connect to the lazy line or make a pendant by tying two ends of a mooring line to both bow cleats and somehow connect the pendant to the lazy line?
Any suggestions would be gratefully received.

[Kenomac]

When facing the same issue, we decided to pull the boat out and store it on the hard if it's not going to be used. A lot less to worry about.

[UNCIVILIZED]

One solution option is to have 2 seperate lines attached to the mooring. Where one is shorter, & functions primarily as a snubber. The second line is the primary connection. And is super substantial, but also has a built in snubber.

Or you could even go with 3 lines. Where one is a snubber, as above. And the other two form a bridle that's connected to the 2 primary bow cleats. Assuming that you can pull this off without the lines getting twisted around one another. Which is possible.

Also, it sounds like the boats in question had undersized cleats which were also improperly mounted. So... to remedy this:
1) Remove all deck cores in the vicinity of the cleats.

2) Replace core with extra glass, & then beef up laminate significantly in the area around the cleats. Including to also reinforce the hull to deck joint in that location on many boats.

3) Buy cleats who's calculated combined fastener strength is significantly stronger than any lines to be attached to the new cleats. Preferably (stainless) steel ones having bolts which penetrate the body of the cleat itself. NOT ones having bolt holes through each of the cleat's feet. As these tend to be weaker than the suggested variety, especially if they're aluminum. And it's not uncommon for them to break where the feet join the cleat body, under extreme loads.

4) Bolt the new cleats in place using monster sized backing plates. Which, if these are aluminum or G10, preferably bond them to the hull.

[Kenomac]

Uncivilized,

Wouldn't it be much cheaper and less trouble to simply take the boat out of the water and store on the hard? Which is what nearly everyone in Europe or here in New England does during the winter.

[UNCIVILIZED]

Originally Posted by Kenomac

Uncivilized,

Wouldn't it be much cheaper and less trouble to simply take the boat out of the water and store on the hard? Which is what nearly everyone in Europe or here in New England does during the winter.

Ken, yes, quite possibly. Especially for the (illusory) peace of mind that such a plan brings. Though for me, undersized & poorly mounted cleats always get priority ranking on my boat To-Do list, for obvious reasons. And I also figure that most folks should have some idea of how strongly certain parts of a boat should be built. Again for their peace of mind (& vessel safety).

[lordgeoff]

Originally Posted by UNCIVILIZED

Ken, yes, quite possibly. Especially for the (illusory) peace of mind that such a plan brings. Though for me, undersized & poorly mounted cleats always get priority ranking on my boat To-Do list, for obvious reasons. And I also figure that most folks should have some idea of how strongly certain parts of a boat should be built. Again for their peace of mind (& vessel safety).

Wouldn't you do both? Haul the boat and rebuild the cleats while it is our of the water.

[kellyp08]

I'd haul the boat. You'll sleep better!

[George DuBose]

I had the idea that if I ever had to leave my boat unattended, but on a well-founded mooring that I would mount a large eye bolt on the waterline of the bow very well backed... and then chain the eye or ring bolt directly to the mooring or the mooring chain.

Of course, the ring/eye bolt would have to be substantial, well-backed and the mooring system would have to be in suitable condition.

...but I haul Skylark every winter.

[UNCIVILIZED]

Originally Posted by Sailogy

I thought it could be a better idea to distribute the force by connecting the lazy line to both bow cleats forming a "Y" shape configuration.
Can you help and suggest exactly which knots and lines I should use regardless of using a mooring compensator? Is it better to tie two separate mooring lines to connect to the lazy line or make a pendant by tying two ends of a mooring line to both bow cleats and somehow connect the pendant to the lazy line?
Any suggestions would be gratefully received.

I'd say that for connecting to the mooring itself, you're best to shackle a short (1.5m) chain leader to the chain pigtail which hangs down from the mooring ball itself. That or to shackle such a leader on a swivel to the upper end of the mooring chain itself. And then shackle your primary mooring pendant to this chain leader via the thimble spliced into the end of the pendant. Seizing the shackles shut after tightening them with a wrench.
Then lead this pendant over the bow roller, & back to a cleat. After which (or during) you need to apply heavy chafe protection to the line.

It'd be best to use an oversized pendant made of Yalon (Dacron cover, Nylon core) for this line. And these pre-made pendants come with thimbles already spliced into one end. They also have a section of movable anti-chafe sleeve that comes with them.

I'd also reserve the option to add a heavy duty rubber snubber to this line.

Then I'd add a second line from the boat to the mooring, probably connecting to the bail on top of it, if I knew that the bail was both structural in nature, & trustworthy.

This line would primarily be a snubber, so I'd use a heavy piece of Nylon, & shackle it to the mooring ball's top bail, done in a manner much akin to what was done with the other pendant. Including adding some serious chafe protection to the line, & leading it to one of the deck cleats on the bow. Ensuring that there wasn't any way for this line to foul the other one, or get wrapped up around the mooring ball.

I can't see using any knots anywhere in this setup, with the possible exception of a thin piece of line being tied to my chafe protection so that it couldn't slip out of place on the pendant.
In the past I've simply woven the bitter end of such a line that holds the anti-chafe sleeve through several tucks of the 3-strand pendant. Or if the anit-chafe sleeve was on the Yalon pendant, then I would use this line to secure the sleeve to the boat itself via cleating it.

Then if you wanted another line incorporated into this, or to use something that acted as a bridle, it would be worth seeing if you could attach a 2nd heavy weight Yalon line to the same connection point as the first Yalon one. And then run both of these primary lines to that seriously stout pair of cleats on the bow. If, that is, I was certain that none of the lines would get snarled around one another. And that none of them were likely to wind up wrapped around the mooring's primary chain.

There are a few other "nice to have" features that could be added to one's mooring connection, such as gear which would prevent the mooring ball from bumping into the boat. But such can be added later, especially as I'm out of energy for typing.

Hopefully the above helps. And Defender (amongst others) has most of the products mentioned herein.

Note that there are other threads on CF which cover this topic, & have lots of useful info, as well as explanations as to why certain things are done a certain way when choosing & setting up one's mooring gear.


Line snubber to be used integral to a mooring or dock line, at Defender.com http://www.defender.com/product.jsp?...134&id=3412475

Pre-made, purpose built mooring pendant at Defender.com http://www.defender.com/product.jsp?...886&id=1854021

[UNCIVILIZED]

Originally Posted by George DuBose

I had the idea that if I ever had to leave my boat unattended, but on a well-founded mooring that I would mount a large eye bolt on the waterline of the bow very well backed... and then chain the eye or ring bolt directly to the mooring or the mooring chain.

Of course, the ring/eye bolt would have to be substantial, well-backed and the mooring system would have to be in suitable condition.

...but I haul Skylark every winter.

I think that the shock loads from the violent motion of a moored boat would destroy one of the components in this system in short order. Also, many of the components mentioned would be prone to work hardening do to the incredibly high number of cycles that they'd be subjected to, under very high loads.

And as an example as to what loading does to these kinds of fittings, like bow eyes, look at how utterly huge the bow eyes are on (serious) hard dinghys. As on my 9', 90lb dory, there was a bow eye made from 1/2" bronze. And it had significant wear on it simply from painter induced wear from being tied behind my boat where I lived on a mooring.
To be honest, I didn't consider it to be at all oversized, & it, along with all of the other dinghy gear, got inspected regularly. Plus there was also a 2ndary towing eye already in place, ready to take the load should the first one die suddenly.

While the primary eye bolt's being bronze helped to fend off it becoming work hardened, but... the writer Bruce Bingham of The Sailor's Sketchbook fame, writes about, & recommends using utterly massive eye bolts with huge backing plates & structural framework on any serious dinghy. And I doubt that he's alone in having penned such.

[donradcliffe]

Had the first small storm of the winter last week. One of the two anchor outs went on the beach. The other one actually survived the entire winter last season, and there were 3 months when the harbor entrance was closed and he couldn't get out and check his boat.

[accomplice]

We've survived lots of storms at a mooring, including direct hit from a Cat 4 hurricane.

In addition to securely attaching a chafe-prrof mooring pendant to multiple strong points on deck (multiple deck cleats, Samson post, primary winches), take actions to reduce windage.

Sent from my SM-G930V using Cruisers Sailing Forum mobile app

[CookiesnTequila]

We wintered an a marina in Crete last year that can develop a fairly heavy surge. It was our first year on our new to us boat and first year living aboard full time. It took a few very uncomfortable days and lots of playing to figure out what the best solution was that for our 50' catamaran.

We had 4 lazy lines - two on each bow (we get charged twice the price in marinas, so I always insist on double the facilities!!). Initially we connected 4, 12mm surge springs to the pier with about a meter of 12mm chain., but we got rid of those after the first storm when one tore apart! Never again!

The best solution we found, is to make a three or four-loop coil out of a length of 3 strand nylon (in our case we used 10 meters of 18mm) for each stern line, and use that loop as the attachment point between the bollard on the pier and our mooring lines. The loop becomes a "spring" when the weather picks up. We then used two mooring lines looped through the bollard loops from and back to our cleats, on each of our 4 stern cleats and 2 midships spring lines, so that we had effectively had 4 lines going from/to each cleat. We then adjusted the lazy lines and used reverse engines to tighten all our lines. This takes a fair bit of back and forth, adjusting lazy lines and increasing reverse thrust until we were at maximum throttle and had all our lines as tight as we possibly could.

When the weather was calm we could have walked across any one of our stern lines, yet when the surge came up it was amazing to see how much give there was in our bollard loops and mooring lines. We were by far the most comfortable and calmest boat in the marina - regardless of swell.