Mooring a 97X

[Kenoten]

I am considering mooring our 97 Mac this summer. I have only done so for a couple weeks at a time... without any problems. Any suggestions for possible hardware upgrades or types of moorings. We have all the lovely standard stuff (plastic cleats). It is possible we may be sinking our own in a lake or we may rent one in a bay on the Hudson.


Our past experience was mooring on the Hudson where the current was sometimes pretty swift and she did fine.

[waltpm]

Just saw your post and maybe this is too late. I kept several of my Mac s on moorings in the Buffalo harbor, before they built a lot of slips. The most important thing is to make sure you are tied to something that wont move. O work partime in a siail store and read a lot of the literature. Have found that even an engine block commonly used for a mooring has been known to be dragged. Best if you can afford it is one of the helical screws , but they are usually professionally installed. I would NOT tie to any of the cleats unless you buy stainless ones andinstall them with large backing plates. Best to tie to Ubolt that you use to hook to your trailer. There will be less chance of rubbing from this point. I did this for about 6 years with noi problems, but there was one year when high winds broke a dozen boats free and put them on the rocks.

Walt Murek

[craiglaforce]

I used to work with a Walt Murek at Praxair (formerly Linde) in Tonawanda. Any relation? I was a process engineer at the time doing a lot of proposals work among other things. At the time I had a small planing dingy AMF Puffer that I learned to sail on the great lakes with. No shortage of wind up there!

Regarding use of the bow eye on a mooring, there was a post a few years ago from someone moored on a lake that had the bow eye break off.
Apparently, it is plenty strong when the pull is from directly ahead, but with the mac's tendancy to veer side to side, a large bending stress is applied which the bow eye may not be suitable to handle. Which is a shame because the boat is better behaved when held by the eye. Kind of like flying a kite with the string in the right place vs the wrong place. Once is stable and flys well and the other is erratic and nose dives all over the place.

Can't say I'm a fan of the plastic cleats either, although mine have held up well on my 97. I Installed one large SS cleat so far with a nice piece of oak for a backing pad. I need to install the other one one of thes days.


Don't forget the chafe protection.

[mike]

One thought for long term mooring and what quite a few of us do is to use a bridle system. Very reliable and disperses the strain.

I assume this means you utilize both bow cleats? I've thought about doing something like this just for anchoring, instead of attaching the anchor line to just one cleat (perhaps that's overkill though). Could you describe how you go about doing this?

--Mike

[Jack O'Brien]

Saw a sailboat that washed ashore recently where the nuts on the back of the boweye backed off and let the boweye loose.

I would use the boweye but have a backup line attached to the mooring that was completely separate, and looser, from the first mooring line. Belt and suspenders saves your butt.

[Frank C]

I've never moored my boat, so this is ust a word of caution from my reading here and on the Sailnet list. One owner reported losing his mast on a mooring in Lake Tahoe. Be certain that your rig is well-tuned, and tighter is probably better.

Remember that your moored rig will get vastly more "working" on a mooring than when you're sailing. If you normally sail one afternoon a week, then the mooring will deliver over 25 times the cycling of your sailing, just comparing 6 hours to 168 hours.

Also, I'd guess that a river mooring with its steady current might deliver less strain to the rig than a lake mooring.