Mooring pick up with high bow

[78puget-trawler]

I do like most have said, take the ball alongside just outside the PH door, snag it with a hook, with line in hand. Eye thru the loop and walk it forward. One more thing about our state park buoys. Get enough current running and the ball will sometimes completely submerge and can get your line all wrapped up in the chain, underneath the ball.
Had this happen at Clark Is last summer, took me about 10 minutes to get my line untangled from the stupid buoy. Not too big a deal if you can roll the buoy over, but tough to do when the current is strong enough to roll it over.

 

[JDCAVE]

On my KK42 I pick up on starboard (starboard prop-walk) at bottom of stairs from front deck. Our bow line reaches this far. Sometimes it takes two tries but mostly not.

Exactly! That’s what we do. We pick up the loop with a pike pole and then pass a line through. For the most part we get it done in one go. Then we walk the line to the pulpit and each through the two hawse holes.

 

[78puget-trawler]

My boat has a high bow. I run a long line from the cleat through the hause pipe back to just outside my pilothouse door. Pick the mooring up there and take the line back up through the hause pipe and take the slack out. I do this solo, so getting the mooring in the right spot and completely stopping the boat is critical.

Ted

Are you saying you actually run the buoy line thru the anchor "hawse" pipe? That seems a little counterintuitive.

 

[Greg S]

Just saw the above "hook and moor", that looks very good, but is expensive at over $300 Cdn and doesn't ship to Canada. I would be interested once shipping is overcome and the price comes down.

Ship to Canada? I bought one at Harbour Chandlers in Nanaimo.

Greg S

 

[Spinner]

I always pick up from the cockpit. The bow is pretty high and I am single handing. I have a side-opening door in the cockpit that puts me almost a water level for that purpose. I wouldn’t pick up from the swim step even if it weren’t mostly covered by the tender - too easy to go in the drink if current or wind are moving the boat. I have a hook n moor, but generally don’t use it. However, a friend showed me a really good technique for that just this weekend (at Sucia), and I think I will give it a try. I will post pictures if I am successful

 

[menzies]

Are you saying you actually run the buoy line thru the anchor "hawse" pipe? That seems a little counterintuitive.

He didn't say anchor hawse pipe.

 

[rslifkin]

Unless it's a mooring with a particularly tall pick up stick, we typically pick it up from the aft deck (or the swim platform if necessary) and then pivot the boat and walk the line forward. Although if wave action isn't a concern, we'll sometimes just take a mooring off the stern depending on wind direction and what that gives us for shade / sun. The boat sits a lot more calmly in the wind off the stern.

 

[allegria]

We use a grappling hook

Our Whaleback has no side walk around so picking up on the side is impossible. We use a light grapple hook attached to a polypropylene light line. Come up to the ball and drop the grapple beyond the pendant. Pull up yo retrieve the light pendant then the heavier mooring line itself. Second person sometimes needed for heavy lines. Have a short snubber to loop through mooring eye.

It works 90% of the time. On the east coast we use it 20 or more times a season. It does not work when the pendant does not have a float to hold the pickup line. This does not work if only a ring at top of buoy.

We tried the grab and go type hook but found it too heavy to maneuver at full extension.

Grapple available at Hamilton’s our other fishing supply place for cheap

Allegria WB 4816
Gregory Han

 

[rgano]

Ah, these small boats are so easy! Every time I was aboard a destroyer (usually conning or on the bridge in direct support) into Hong Kong, we had to perform the agonizingly complex standard Navy mooring to the man-of-war buoy dance. Entering harbor, prep an anchor chain by detaching it from the anchor and horsing it up to the bullnose. 500 yards or so from man-of-war buoy; launch the whaleboat with standard 3-man crew and two buoy jumpers with appropriate tools. Head the ship into the current and stop with the bullnose a close to the buoy as possible, and pass a mooring line messenger to the whaleboat which then transfers the buoy jumpers and the line to the buoy while remaining carefully clear of the area between ship and buoy. The messenger is rove through the buoy shackle, and the end returned to the ship where a lot of manpower is available to help pull the 6-inch mooring line down to the buoy crew who hopefully very quickly shackle it to the buoy. And we are moored, right? Wrong. Next the ship is winched up tight to the buoy (jumpers having retreated to the whaleboat) and the anchor chain is lowered to the buoy. Then the whaleboat returns the buoy jumpers to the buoy where they shackle the chain to the buoy shackle. Now we are moored. There are any number of ways this evolution can go very wrong very fast, and until that mooring line is first made fast to the buoy, the conning has to be of a high degree of precision. Unmooring is the reverse. The last time I was there in command of a towing and salvage ship, we were invited because of our size toe moor alongside HMS Tamar, the Royal Navy base. What a pleasure to not have to wait forever at either end for the water taxi!

 

[Codger2]

We have a high bow too. So we pick up the buoy through one of the side doors, thread a rope through the loop and walk it forward. Then we can attach the buoy at bow/foredeck. We wear gloves to avoid barnacles on ropes. This became a lot easier to coordinate since we started wearing headsets for communication.

That's a very good point (headsets) when hooking up to a mooring ball. They sure take the stress out of communicating with the catcher. We've used them for about 2 years without a shouting contest.

 

[MVDarlin]

I use a Hook and Go. Easy to connect with a boat hook, easy release lanyard.

 

[MVDarlin]

Also, Hook and go is attached to a bridle.

 

[HuffinandPuffin]

I haven’t tried it but a camera that lets you look straight down onto the mooring float seems like it would be quite helpful.

 

[SteveK]

Ah, these small boats are so easy! Every time I was aboard a destroyer (usually conning or on the bridge in direct support) into Hong Kong, we had to perform the agonizingly complex standard Navy mooring to the man-of-war buoy dance. Entering harbor, prep an anchor chain by detaching it from the anchor and horsing it up to the bullnose. 500 yards or so from man-of-war buoy; launch the whaleboat with standard 3-man crew and two buoy jumpers with appropriate tools. Head the ship into the current and stop with the bullnose a close to the buoy as possible, and pass a mooring line messenger to the whaleboat which then transfers the buoy jumpers and the line to the buoy while remaining carefully clear of the area between ship and buoy. The messenger is rove through the buoy shackle, and the end returned to the ship where a lot of manpower is available to help pull the 6-inch mooring line down to the buoy crew who hopefully very quickly shackle it to the buoy. And we are moored, right? Wrong. Next the ship is winched up tight to the buoy (jumpers having retreated to the whaleboat) and the anchor chain is lowered to the buoy. Then the whaleboat returns the buoy jumpers to the buoy where they shackle the chain to the buoy shackle. Now we are moored. There are any number of ways this evolution can go very wrong very fast, and until that mooring line is first made fast to the buoy, the conning has to be of a high degree of precision. Unmooring is the reverse. The last time I was there in command of a towing and salvage ship, we were invited because of our size toe moor alongside HMS Tamar, the Royal Navy base. What a pleasure to not have to wait forever at either end for the water taxi!

Every time I approach a buoy, that will be going through my head. Thanks I think.
Usually boat hook it and pull up, run line through and drop it, tie off.

 

[caltexflanc]

I haven’t tried it but a camera that lets you look straight down onto the mooring float seems like it would be quite helpful.

Interesting, but I'm not sure I can envision that being practical. I usually handled mooring-grabbing duties and had Ann at the helm. Regardless of where the pick-up point was going to be, I followed the Man Overboard Protocol and kept pointing directly where the buoy was, she used the shifters and sometimes the thruster until I gave the thumbs up to stop. And we were never shy about asking for help if it was available from someone nearby in a dinghy or launch or pre-arranged with the harbormaster as we approached the harbor.

We never could get our various sets of "marriage savers" to work satisfactorily, so used a system of simple hand signals for a variety of docking, anchoring and mooring activities.

 

[BrianSmith]

Our bow is at least 8' off the water. We have a 3-section extendable boat hook. Fran drives the boat, I'm on the bow - we use EarTec headsets to communicate. She gets boat where I want it and holds it there. (Bow and stern thrusters help immensely.)

I grab any part of the pennant with the hook and bring it up to me, hold it in one hand while I lay down the boat hook with the other. I already have both bridle line ends right there, ready to poke through the thimble on the end of the pennant. Poke 'em through, tie off one, then the other.

In 4 months in the VI's and 6 months down island, where we moored at least 5-6 times a month (almost every day in the VI's sometimes), we never had a problem with this approach.

 

[Nomad Willy]

I picked them up in the aft cockpit and then walked the line fwd.