[Sonar] Thanks everyone who helped

[Thomas_M_Brown at bluecrossmn.com]

Thanks to everyone who helped get Tally Ho! off of the beach after 
breaking from her mooring.


The lower buoy ring gave way yesterday and the boat drifted to essentially 
the only sandy area in the whole bay.   We were lucky.   Very little and 
superficial damage seems to be evident.   The funny thing is, is that I 
had checked the bouy ring the night before and was worried about it and 
was on my way to the boat Wednesday with reinforcement when Ernie called 
me and said that the boat had come loose.    Wouldn't you know,   it gives 
way right at the time that we were thinking about it.

Those of you on moorings should really check the lower ring of the bouy to 
see how much it has worn.    Mine was almost paper thin when I checked it 
Tuesday night.    Its also can wear at the shackle to the weight itself at 
the lower end,  but more slowly.   Both should be checked.  Most of these 
shackles are made with hot dipped galvanized low carbon steel which wears 
pretty quickly when compared to stainless.

The other thing that is important about bouys that I've seen at the club 
is that its important to connect the pennant to the bottom ring of the 
bouy...never the top.     The top ring is purely for pickup purposes.  Its 
my opinion that some of the increased wear on the lower ring on the bouy I 
was on was caused by the pivot tipping of the bouy caused by the pennant 
attached at the top,  which slowly but surely wore away the bottom ring.

At Falmouth Forside (ME) we used a different bouy type that allowed the 
chain to go completely through the bouy, had a large D ring at top (for 
pickup only)  and had a special collar at both ends  that eliminated this 
wear on the lower 'ring'.      The pennant was anchor shackled to the 
chain underneath the mooring bouy and a pennant was fold over hitched to 
give a double pennant which was then attached all the way to the mast 
(both of them).    If the harbor master didn't see that you had this 
double pennant,  or if you had a pennant to the top part of the bouy, you 
usually got a little lecture on the trip in from the boat on the tender 
(we had ferry service tender there rather than canoes etc.).     There, 
the bouy fields were so large that most of the $$ damage from a loose boat 
was not from the boat itself,   but all the boats that it hit  as it 
drifted out of the bouy field.   They were pretty sensitive to drifting 
boats.   Marblehead (Eastern YC) has a really famous story about this and 
Courageous,  the old 12 meter.

I would just hate to see this happen to another boat when it could be 
prevented....and also we were VERY lucky...it wasn't in a bad storm with a 
lot of waves,  our mast didn't get damaged in any low hanging trees,  and 
the wind direction was perfect to have the boat drift to the only sandy 
area in the whole bay.



Thomas Brown
"Maximizing Business by Minimizing Surprises"


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