[Sonar] Thanks everyone who helped

[Mark Kochendorfer]

Glad to help and glad there was no major damage.

I am quite concerned about my boat as well.  I can inspect the visible parts
of the buoy system, but only the club staff can lift the mooring up and
verify that it all is sound down to the block.  When I spoke with Steve Bren
it sounded like my buoy at least had been inspected.  I wonder how this was
missed on yours.  It seems like moorings break or move more often than they
should.  What is the maintenance program?

I had always understood that the top ring should be used to moor the boats.
The reason for this is that under heavy load the buoy gets submerged by the
load pulling on the top ring down through the block.  This acts as another
shock absorber and also kind of a reverse sentinel.  If you moor to the
bottom of the float you will not get this effect.

So my recommendation is to always moor to the top ring and run a safety line
from the top ring down to the chain (or block if you can get there).  There
is less chafe and rot on your mooring line this way too.

Mark
Liberty

On 5/4/06, Thomas_M_Brown at bluecrossmn.com <Thomas_M_Brown at bluecrossmn.com>
wrote:
>
> 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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--
Mark
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