Swinging Mooring - Single Handed
Tony Buckley
single handed in a 26 footer? I have a pick up buoy.
Someone told me that lasooing is no longer acceptable as this can damage
the buoy.
I have seen devices similar to danbuoys that can be grabbed at rail
height as you go alongside - anyone know what these are called?
Many thanks.
Tony
Guy Fawkes
how we used to do it..... this even works when you are drunk /
exhausted / injured..
1/ prepare beforehand a length of suitable warp = 2.5 x LWL
2/ make one end fast to farard bitts, lead outboard forard, carry back
outboard to cockpit, coil and make ready
3/ have boathook in cockpit
4/ sail / motor up to mooring, lose way so boat will halt with morring
a couple off feet off cockpit
5/ pick up tag end of warp in one hand and boathook in other, snag
mooring with boathook, and bring alongside, pass warp through mooring.
6/ drop boathook and walk to bow with end of warp, make fast.
7/ haul
there was an old boy with one arm who used to moor single handed like
this
Pierce Egan
If you have a wooden boat hook you can buy a fitting which you screw on the
side near the end. The fitting holds a large carabinier open. You attach a
rope to your foredeck bitts or samson or w.h.y., lead it through the bow
roller, outside everything along the side of the boat, attach the rope to
the carabinier (round turn and two half-hearteds) and now stand in your
cockpit and smile. You've done the hardest bit. Motor up to the bouy, turn
into the tide, get the bouy alongside your cockpit, lean over the sidewith
your boathook and now snap the carabinier onto the bouy's ring. Put engine
in neutral and walk up to foredeck. Pull your boat onto the mooring via
whatever method suits you. I do it hand over hand, then loop the mooring
rope over the bitts before releasing my carabinier.
Tony Buckley <Comma...@virgin.net> wrote in message
news:39699E51...@virgin.net...
> Can anyone offer me any tips of how to safely pick up a swinging mooring
> single handed in a 26 footer? I have a pick up buoy.
>
> Someone told me that lasooing is no longer acceptable as this can damage
> the buoy.
>
> I have seen devices similar to danbuoys that can be grabbed at rail
> height as you go alongside - anyone know what these are called?
>
>
> Tony
Ian Johnston
: Can anyone offer me any tips of how to safely pick up a swinging mooring
: single handed in a 26 footer? I have a pick up buoy.
Make youself a 30' length of rope with an eye splice at each end. Put one
end over your mooring cleat at the bow, then take it through the fairlead and
lead it back to the stern. Get a BIG snap attachment thingy for the back end.
To pick up your mooring simply do what you normally do but bring the stern up
to the buoy instead of the bow. Reach over (the boat is near as dammit
stationary), grab the buoy, snap your line onto the mooring riser (if it's
strong enough) or the main cable if necessary and throw the whole lot
overboard.
Presto! You are snuggly moored by the bow. At your leisure stroll forward
and pull the mooring aboar as usual.
Well, that's how I've been doing it for the last fifteen years!
Ian
rcronin
> single handed in a 26 footer? I have a pick up buoy.
I have a largish water cistern float and stop cock (cheap from local
builders
supplies)-drill hole in top of float to take plastic rod same dia as stop
cock arm, insert tube with glue on bottom, this seats in a "hole" which
exists in the float at the "inside" of the screw in point for the arm.
length of rod should stick out say 20 cm. Sleve over this with a light tube
about 1metre long to suit- I used top of old fishing rod- free) screw in arm
& stop cock, loop line round arm and run up over float & up tube, fix with
cable ties, at top of line sleeve on some flexible plastic tube and form a
good sized loop, fix to top of tube with amalgamating tape so it sticks up
to form an open loop. Nearly there- link with rope to pick up bouy.
The arm and stopcock act as a counterweight, when you approach, you should
now have a good target with the loop sticking
up in full view at a convenient hight, slow to stop with the loop nuddging
the bow, stroll forward pick up loop
which then pulls pick up buoy etc up into boat. You need to "grade" what
you are pulling eg get some rope in before hauling a heavy chain. You can
have a boat hook in reserve to hook the loop if it wanders. If things ever
get difficult I just use the rope from my mooring chain to pick up bouy
having grabbed the loop any where, secure the rope to anything solid and
sort it out afterwards.
It works every time for me,
Roger Cronin
Sandy Morton
Tony Buckley <Comma...@virgin.net> wrote:
> I have seen devices similar to danbuoys that can be grabbed at rail
> height as you go alongside - anyone know what these are called?
Depending upon the height of the bow of your boat the following will work.
The following specs are for Ar Bata - 25 foot waterline, and about 4 feet
from sea level to bow. Find/buy a dan buoy about 2 foot in diameter. Get
a length of aluminium tube 1 inch diameter and about 8 feet long -
obtainable from any good TV aerial supplier. Flatten the bottom of the
tube and pour in about 12 inches of lead. Push the tube through the dan
buoy leaving about 2 feet below the buoy. Fasten the dan buoy to the tube
- use your own ingenuity - we lashed it with polyprop and fixed the
polyprop to the tube with jubilee clips. Put a brightly coloured cycle
handlebar grip on the top of the tube.
We've been using this system for about 10 years now with occasional
replacements of tube and rope.
hth.
--
sandymillport
on the bicycle island
in the global village
http://www.sandymillport.fsnet.co.uk
RBurns
SailingNet: Mooring made easy
http://www.sailingnet.co.uk/skills/27/skill_1.asp
Randy
rb...@hotmail.com
http://pages.prodigy.net/rb234/saili.html
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Katy Sandell
<Comma...@virgin.net> wrote:
I don't think lassoing is the best technique for single handled and
others have suggested better ways, particulary if it's your home
mooring and can get the arrangement set up for single handed.
However, lassoing can be a very useful techique. I dont beleive the
damage to buoy story unless you leave the boat moored by its lasso.
You should not do this, even for a few minutes as the line can very
quickly get wrapped around the fitting on the bottom of the buoy and
you can easily loose you line.
Ian
>Can anyone offer me any tips of how to safely pick up a swinging mooring
>single handed in a 26 footer? I have a pick up buoy.
>
>Someone told me that lasooing is no longer acceptable as this can damage
>the buoy.
>
>I have seen devices similar to danbuoys that can be grabbed at rail
>height as you go alongside - anyone know what these are called?
>
>Many thanks.
>
>Tony
Rainer Thonnes
>others have suggested better ways, particulary if it's your home
>mooring and can get the arrangement set up for single handed.
Am I missing something here? If Tony has a pick up bouy, what is to
prevent him just picking it up with a boathook? He simply needs to
practice his parking, aiming to arrive at as near zero relative
velocity as practicable, with the buoy alongside his steering position.
He will already have his boathook in hand, and it should take only
half a second to get from tiller to guardrail, and less than 3 seconds
to grab the buoy with the hook. Then haul it up smartly and walk
forward with it to secure it, provisionally if necessary.
If despite best efforts he can't do it in time, the usual answer is
to lead a warp from the bows back to the cockpit, round the outside
of everything, perhaps with a hook on the end, which he can quickly
attach to the loop in the end of the pickup rope. He can then take
his time to walk forward and haul it in.
That reminds me. Perhaps I should invest in a proper pickup buoy.
At the moment I use a dumpy fender instead, which makes it awkward
to pick up with a boathook, because I have to grapple underneath it
for the rope, which is weighed down by the chain I normally use to
attach the boat to the main mooring. Sometimes, particularly when
the tide is running, there isn't enough time to haul the chain in
and make secure before I end up taking the full strain.
That's why the rope is attached to the pick up buoy with a largish
bight (a bowline, in fact), and there's usually enough time to walk
that forward, shove it over the bow roller, and loop the bight over
either the big cleat or the anchor winch. Once the boat has settled,
and if wind or tide is too strong to pull myself closer, I can always
nip back for a bit of engine assist.
PyroJames
Rainer Thonnes <r...@dcs.ed.ac.uk> wrote in message
news:8ki4f5$6a9$6...@kane.dcs.ed.ac.uk...
I normally come in so that the bouy lies just for'd of the starboard
shrouds, that way I can have the boat hook ready on the fordeck, as the boat
coasts to a stop, I can move forward and pick up the bouy. Picking it up
fo'r'd of the shrouds means that you don't have to man handle it forward
from the cockpit, and it takes you less time to get it onto the cleat,
samson post, whatever. In tidal waters this can be quite a significant
advantage.
--
PyroJames
"Dawn Wind of Kirribilli"
Suffolk.
Pierce Egan
> > prevent him just picking it up with a boathook? He simply needs to
> > practice his parking, aiming to arrive at as near zero relative
> > velocity as practicable, with the buoy alongside his steering position.
> > He will already have his boathook in hand, and it should take only
> > half a second to get from tiller to guardrail, and less than 3 seconds
> > to grab the buoy with the hook. Then haul it up smartly and walk
> > forward with it to secure it, provisionally if necessary.
This could get a bit accident prone in crowded moorings with -say - a 2 knot
ebb. You'd have to pass the pick up bouy hand to hand to yourself around the
shrouds on most boats. If anything goes wrong you could find yourself
halfway to the foredeck with a handfull of air and the tiller ten feet away
(fifteen feet if you're rich!). Much better to secure to the bouy from the
cockpit and then move forward or let the boat drop back on a line led from
the samson post and outside of everything.
Graham Frankland
Tony Buckley wrote in message <39699E51...@virgin.net>...
>Can anyone offer me any tips of how to safely pick up a swinging mooring
>single handed in a 26 footer? I have a pick up buoy.
>
>Someone told me that lasooing is no longer acceptable as this can damage
>the buoy.
>
Sorry if I'm missing the point but - what's the problem? If you have a pick
up buoy then all you need is a boat hook and some practice.
The most important point with swinging moorings is to judge the combined
effect of wind and tide so you need to see how the other boats are lying and
approach your buoy accordingly.
Take your time, approach as slowly as you can to maintain steerage, as you
come up to the buoy go into neutral and walk forward and hook either the
pickup buoy or its line with the boathook, from the stem.
It helps to have a fairly strong (10mm nylon will do for a 26 footer)
longish pick up line from the mooring strop to the pick up buoy so on
difficult days you can get a quick turn on to a cleat and then haul in and
cleat the mooring strop afterwards, sometimes with the help of the engine
ticking over ahead, if a strong tide is flowing.
Graham.
Geoff Blake
: Tony Buckley wrote in message <39699E51...@virgin.net>...
: Graham.
Or as I do:
Rig a long line ~12m from a cockpit cleat, via a bow fairlead back to the
cockpit outside all with a spring loaded snap shackle, caribiner or whatever
at the working end.
Come alongside the mooring buoy stemming wind or tide as appropriate and
clip the shackle onto the strop (or in my case, the pickup ring on the
mooring buoy) and let the boat drop back whilst taking in the slack.
Then go forward and tidy things up.
Geoff
--
Geoff Blake geoff (at) palaemon . co . uk linux 2.0.36
Chelmsford g8gnz @ g8gnz . ampr . org sparc - i586
Please, only use the .ampr.org address if you know what you are doing
Intel create faster processors - Microsoft create slower processes
Cameron
length painter that way when you come to the buoy grab the line
between the dinghy and the buoy - it gives you more room for error!
Good luck
On Sat, 22 Jul 2000 16:54:21 +0100, Alex Nichol
<al...@mvpdts.fsnet.delete.co.uk> wrote:
>Graham Frankland wrote:
>
>> Take your time, approach as slowly as you can to maintain steerage, as you
>> come up to the buoy go into neutral and walk forward and hook either the
>> pickup buoy or its line with the boathook, from the stem.
>
>Or have a line made fast at the stem, come up to try to halt (or near
>it) with the buoy along the lee side of the cockpit, and attach the
>line there. Either have a strong line on a pickup buoy which will
>take the strain temporarily, or a ring which you can pick up with a
>hook-on system
>
>--
>Alex Nichol
>Bournemouth, U.K.
>Al...@mvps.org