Mooring tips?

[NS_trimaran]

New owner here. Any advice on using a swing mooring ball? My club has specs, which I followed, but it appears there is only the one bow mooring cleat to use? Or are there other factors to address?

Chris
in Halifax, NS still planning the renaming ceremony.

[BoarX]

Hi Chris,

Congrats on your new T28! We have very limited one season mooring experience. We also have only one forward cleat It is highly recommended to install two additional ones on either side of a bow to use "conventional" Y shape mooring bridle. Nothing to brag about as on one occasion (on my birthday!) Unicorn went off the mooring. Fortunately it was in a narrow bay and my friends were able to tie her back - all to my embarrassment. We don't really know why it happened, but having just one mooring line is obviously dangerous. Subsequently I replaced the mooring bridle with chain enclosing it with foam pipe insulation to prevent the damage to the hull and attaching a snubber parallel to the chain to reduce the jerk loads to the cleat. Here is the snubber we used: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00 ... UTF8&psc=1 . I have noticed many people use snubbers on mooring bridles, must be for a good reason. That arrangement held up for a few months. These days we keep her on shore mast up, launching every time we come out. A bit more work, but we are getting better at that and definitely sleep so much better! An added bonus is no growth on the hull. In the end of that mooring season I had to spend a full day with power washer cleaning away this growth. Also no need to apply anti-foul in spring. We think this is well worth the launching-retrieval effort. And our annual cost now is like a half of the one for the mooring.

Good luck!
Alex and Lucy