back on a mooring after months in a marina - thoughts welcome

[dylan winter]

Fekkin lobster pots.  Twin keel centaurs with a centre prop are pot magnets. If you see one dissappear under the bow it will embrace your prop or rudder.  The fisher has a long shallow keel so pots are not nearly such a problem.

As for mooring etiquette.

I often pick up empty moorings on  my modest winter journeys.  I am only out in calm weather so the boat is no threat to the tackle. It would be impossible to find an owner to ask.  I do not leave the boat.

There are two other reasons for using other peoples  moorings rather than dropping the anchor. The moorings are always in the best places to anchor. Be3tter to use a mooring than foul an anchor on the same mooring.  

Anchors and long scopes can do a fair amount of damage to the sea bed so  unnecesarily slinging an anchor and chain down into  the local slime  is not wonderful for the ecology.

Anchoring is no trouble here - the mud offers wonderful holding - although the anchor always comes up with a few gobbets of black estuary goo that makes a mess of the foredeck.  Any mud on the anchor chain that is transferred to the bow locker gives the vee birth an authentic seaside ambience.

Dylan

 

[Kenny Dumas]

Highest water of the year so far = lots of driftwood. I just spent an hour wrangling logs off the anchor lines. Way more fun than mowing the lawn. 

 

[Fah Kiew Tu]

Looking at Dylan's original post, when it comes to choosing one or the other, I'm in a sort of a gray zone.

I'm on a private dock of which I am the dockmaster, in a small, quiet cove. It's not on my residential property so I don't pay outrageous waterfront property taxes but the dock is only a 2 minute walk from my front door.  We have maybe a dozen boats in the high season and 2-3 in the off season. There are moorings in the cove and I could install one if I wanted.

I would say that I have the best of both worlds. 

Yep, agree, a friend of mine is in a similar situation. The small dock is restricted to property owners and run as a community facility. He can walk from his house to his boat, cast off & be gone in 15 minutes. He sails a lot.

I'd do that if I could, but it's not possible so my mooring in front of my house works for me.

One thing I'm considering is building a substantial floating dock/barge out of fish farm pontoons. I have 15 of those, you see, and each one will support at least 300kg with lots of reserve buoyancy. I could tie my boat alongside, have a shack on top of the barge with water catchment, PV panels, small workshop etc etc. And all - technically - within the maritime rules around here.

But I'm not quite bored enough as yet. After the next round of boat upgrades planned for September/October, maybe.

FKT