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Mooring ball too close?

2K views 13 replies 10 participants last post by  cthoops 
#1 ·
Our boat was launched on Saturday and when we went to see it yesterday we noticed that the stern is rather close to the mooring ball behind us (I'd say our stern is within 6 feet). It's close enough that we couldn't tie our dinghy off of the stern. The marina said the ball behind us is unassigned so we could use an extra long painter to tie the dinghy off, but I was thinking of asking to be reassigned to a different mooring ball.

Am I worrying over nothing? This is our first boat, so I recognize that's quite possible! :) Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks!
 
#3 ·
Many, if not most, mooring systems use a length of heavy chain attached to the mushroom or block, the end of which is then connected to the line that goes up to the mooring ball. The chain lies on the bottom, and if it is pointed in the direction of your mooring, it effectively moves the ground zero for its ball closer to your boat. (But once another boat is tied to that mooring, that boat's mass is enough to drag the chain on the bottom away from your mooring.)
This happened to me, and when the mooring service came to fix it, the guy just picked up the offending ball and dragged it away from my mooring. Problem solved.
 
#4 ·
mt formosa was assigned to a ball with a power boat next to it---of course they hit--and all damages were to my formosa, before i bought her....do move and prevent this from happening to you..my po was a boat virgin, and didnt know any better--i took pix and sent to mooring co, but they did nothing about the mayhem insofar as relocation of the offending power boat, which was in with deep keeled formosa type boats--between a ct 41 and a formosa 41--only hit mine, was decent distance from the other ct....get to a place with the correct amount of swing for each involved boat. 6 ft doesnt cut it.
 
#5 ·
There seems to be plenty of room to swing around. It was quite windy yesterday and we were turning quite a bit. :) It's just that our closest point to the ball behind us is around six feet or so. But that ball is going to remain unassigned. Maybe I'm obsessing over nothing. Or not. I don't know. Sigh.
 
#7 ·
Just use the dink to pull the ball away a bit. The chain should them keep it put with no boat hanging on it.
 
#8 ·
As joe said if it has excess chain you might be able to yank it back away with your dink. Power boats and sailboats usually don't swing at anchor together. They will each react to wind and current in different ways. A deep keel sailboat should moor near other deep keel sailboats. When I pickup a mooring I generally back down on it to stretch it out and to make sure it is secure.:)
 
#11 ·
something else to keep in mind. centreboarders and shoal keels react differently than full keel boats and even fin keels in response to wind and current.

Shoal and centreboarders tend to go with the wind, fin keels can go with the wind or the current (depending on depth and length of fin) and full keel boats tend to react more to tide and current.

What this means is that if the current is out of the north and the wind is out of the south and you have a full keel boat moored near a centreboarder, you have a chance they can either be far away from each other.. or right up against each other.
 
#12 ·
I think you'll have to wait until a boat uses the mooring beside you to see if it's too close. When you have a boat on it and pulling the chain/rope it might end up a good distance from you. Both of my moorings are in mooring fields (one of them very crowded) and it often seems the other moorings are too close when there is no boat on them. If you're in a marina or yacht club, perhaps you can ask the manager to keep an eye on things when another boat is using the mooring beside you, at least until you're sure you both have swinging room.
 
#13 ·
I've had my boat wrap up with another which was too close on an adjacent mooring. When this happened, I was in a tidal river with strong currents. When wind and current are running opposite directions, the boats would not all swing together. That's when the trouble starts. Many of the boats towed a bucket or something to create drag, insuring the tide would win the argument with the wind, but this was not fool proof.

If you are in a bay with little or no currents, you can get away with being very close to similar boats that swing together. In some of the local harbors on Cape Cod, the moorings are very close and there are few problems. Tidal range is small as are currents.

If you are in a river, or an estuary with strong tidal currents, you want lots of space. And if you intend on riding out a storm with some surge, you'd like some ability to add scope to your pennant. In these cases, we'd ask to move.
 
#14 ·
Thanks for the suggestions, everyone.

The ball behind us is definitely going to remain vacant, so I feel a lot better about it after reading some of the responses. We'll see if we can move the vacant ball a bit farther back with the dinghy on Friday. We'll also get a longer painter (and some anti-chafing) so we can tie the dinghy to the stern of our boat while it's moored.

Thanks again.
 
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