Leaving your dingy on a mooring while you're day sailing?

[mikeedmo]

We have a mooring just south of the ocean inlet. We're seeing folks dingying out to their moored boats and leaving their dingy at the mooring. Any thoughts on what may be the best way to secure the dingy that won't interfere with picking up the mooring pendant when we return or should we not even do this? It'd be great to leave the dink at the mooring for a day sail!

[sailingfool]

Originally Posted by mikeedmo

We have a mooring just south of the ocean inlet. We're seeing folks dingying out to their moored boats and leaving their dingy at the mooring. Any thoughts on what may be the best way to secure the dingy that won't interfere with picking up the mooring pendant when we return or should we not even do this? It'd be great to leave the dink at the mooring for a day sail!

Tie it to the mooring ball with a bowline, then climb onto your bow. Tie it so it floats just next to your bow.

[sailingdog]

It really depends on your boat... if the boat has too much freeboard to get aboard at the bow, you might want to leave a second painter in the dinghy that will allow you to tie the dinghy to the stern of your boat after tieing up to the mooring.

If you do leave the dinghy on the mooring, make sure you've got a good outboard motor lock, or you may return from a daysail to find the dink's motor missing.

[tdw]

WTF ? Why on earth would you climb on board at the bow ? Seems strange to me. We tie off to the stern when we arrive at the boat, unload our gear etc , get her ready to go out then walk the dinghy to the bow, tie it off to the mooring buoy which we then drop into the dinghy and cast off. Climbing onboard over the bow is impossible to difficult on anything much bigger than 30' and doable albeit difficult on smaller boats but why would you bother ?

Oh yes , and you do need a good knot. Round turn and a couple of half hitches is asking for trouble particualrly if tied to one of those plastic mooring buoys. It will slip. Trust me on this . Bowline is good.

[Faster]

A lightly loaded bowline is not the most secure knot around. Leaving a long tail and putting a half hitch or two behind the bowline would make me feel better about leaving the dinghy unattended.

Security issues aside, leaving the dinghy there is an obvious indication that the buoy is in use.

We don't really have mooring buoy fields here like you have on the East coast, but many parks do provide buoys... in that case it is not permitted to "reserve" your mooring with a dinghy.

I'd be tempted to leave it on a long enough painter(floating line, of course) that the dinghy ends up alongside the cockpit once you've snagged the buoy on your return.

[Sailormann]

I'll let you in on a secret "mikeedmo" ..... it doesn't matter what knot you use ! Use your dinghy to get out to the boat. Climb on to the boat. Pass up everything from the dinghy on to the boat. Stow it. Get the boat ready to go. Tie the dinghy to the mooring. Go sailing.

When you come back, get the boat close enough to the dinghy to reach it with a boathook. Pull the boat up to the dinghy and then ue the dinghy to pull the boat up to the mooring. Tie the boat up to the mooring. Load up the dinghy with your empties and your garbage. Climb aboard. Go home.

[mikeedmo]

Excellent advice!! Many thanks.. we're off!!!