Mooring pendants

[Mark.Wilme]

We don't use moorings often, staying mostly at our home marina, visiting other marinas or staying on the hook so I have never had to really think about the mooring pendant. However we could be staying in Jamestown RII for a couple of nights once the baot goes back in the water and I thought I'd buy or make a mooring pendant and I came across what seem to be two contradictory ways of attaching oneself to the mooring ball.

One is to pass the mooring pendant through the eye of the ball and secure both ends on board, it appears that purpose made pendants have special chaffe protection in the bight of the pendant to protects against where the line passes through the eye. Note this is how we have traditionally used a mooring.

The other way appears to be to use this eye to lift the mooring ball from the water and secure to the chain beneath. I quote from the Polyform website at http://www.polyformus.com/doc/qna.htm

When picking up a mooring, always use the top ring to pick the buoy with a boat hook. Then shackle the mooring pennant to the mooring chain shackle, rather than to the buoy itself. This puts all the strain on the anchor chain, rather than the buoy.

Which is correct ?

Also, are people buying $80 plus pendants for an occassional one or two night on a mooring or are they making their own from polypropelene (float and stretch) line ?

Mark

[dasein668]

Huh. All rental moorings I've seen up this way have pendants attached. As do all non-rentals, for that matter, though I rarely pick up a "destination" mooring.

Standard practice in Maine is for pendants to have a thimble spliced in at one end which is attached to a swivel at the top of the chain via a shackle. (See this Hamilton Marine catalog page for an illustration.)

If I was going to bring along my own pendant, I would have a real (probably Yale) pendant and appropriate shackles, and haul the mooring up and attach to the swivel.

[bcooke]

When picking up a mooring, always use the top ring to pick the buoy with a boat hook.

maybe it is just because I single hand most of the time but picking up a ball from the top ring is a lot harder than just sweeping under the ball and snagging the line... for me at least.

I generally draw up the ball and inspect what I am contemplating trusting the safety of my boat with. Most moorings seem to have a pendant which I might use or I just haul up and cleat off the main mooring line. I could see where owning my own pendant would mean I could keep the often slimy/unused mooring line off my decks but it hasn't been enough of a bother to worry about.

Then again, I rarely use other people's moorings so maybe I should keep my mouth shut.

-Britton

[Tim]

The information on the Polyform site that you quoted is horribly generic and not necessarily applicable. Most of the mooring floats around here don't have any top ring; they are inflatable balls with a single molded eye on the bottom, to which the chain attaches. The pendants are typically attached to the chain just below the ball.

If there's not a pendant on a ball like this, it's extremely difficult and always messy to try and attach one, and isn't feasible for a casual cruiser looking for one or two nights' stay. With heavy chain attached, as most heavy moorings have, you need a winch to pull the thing up--certainly not as pleasantly simple as they make it sound with the boathook thing. Any mooring I really want to put my boat on will be this heavy, so if I could pull it up easily I don't think I'd love it. I've always taken moorings very seriously since most of my mooring experience has been in over-exposed harbors where heavy tackle is an absolute must.

I don't know what the standard is in Rhode Island for moorings, though. It may well be different. For what it's worth, I hate those hard plastic buoys with the metal eyes on both ends. When the wind dies, they bang against your hull in an irritating fashion. Inflatable balls have their pitfalls too, of course.

For fair-weather stays when you're on the boat, almost any line would do, but line run through a metal eye can very quickly and alarmingly chafe. A spliced metal thimble and shackle is a better idea if you're going to have your own pendant. But you can come up with workable chafe solution with some hose or some such for temporary moorage.

That said, most moorings that I am used to always have a pendant attached--unless there isn't one. But the good cruiser should be prepared for anything, so if you rinformation indicates that you should have means of providing your own pendant, I would choose something strong and with chafe protection, but not overly heavy or bulky either.

Whether or not you are staying on the boat might have some bearing on how you tie up, as well. I wouldn't be real comfortable leaving my boat with a temporary mooring line, but if I were on board and able to keep an eye out or move if the weather went south, I would be fine with something like a line run through a metal eye. In fair weather. In protected waters. With a trustworthy line. And so forth. If I had to leave the boat, I'd probably want a real mooring line, complete with metal thimble and shackles.

[Eric]

I carry a piece of 5/8" or 3/4" nylon with a spliced thimble and chafe gear and a collection of various shackles in case I need to leave the boat on someone's mooring to deal with some emergency elsewhere. (With permission, of course.)

Downeast, I think there is a fair chance that an otherwise perfectly acceptable mooring will have a pendant that is too heavy for my chock. I think I would worry about the rest of any mooring that had an inadequate pendant without assurances from a trustworthy source.

[Figment]

I've always addressed the slimy/nasty pendant issue by slipping my own (clean) line through the pendant eye and cleating that off on deck. Ditto for superfat pendants that won't fit the chocks or bitt.

I think that (particularly in a bigbucks harbor like Jamestown) if you're paying for a mooring and it doesn't come equipped with a proper pendant, you ask for a different mooring before bothering with shackling your own gear to theirs. As Tim says.... it's not an easy thing.

If it's a calm anchorage or if I'm just staying for lunch I'll just loop to the top ring of the bouy, but I don't think I'd chance that in Jamestown. That place can get nasty in a blow.