Sailing Off Of And Back On To My Mooring

[Sea Hunt]

Yesterday a good friend and sailing instructor began the process of teaching me how to sail off of and back on to my mooring. I say "began the process" because, as readers know, I am about as dumb as they come. It will take me several more lessons before I get the hang of it.

I have wanted to learn this technique for some time - mostly as a safety factor, in the event I am out sailing and my O/B fails or I am on my mooring and my O/B fails and I really, really want to go sailing, but also because it seems more enjoyable.

I finally completed the repairs to my O/B and tested it in a large bucket. All seems OK. I decided not to attach the O/B yesterday because my friend said "you really don't need it. It's more fun without it." I'm glad I took his advise. It was a great feeling to be able to sail off of the mooring without the noise of the O/B. We sailed part way out the channel did some tacks and jibes, etc. and then came back through the mooring field (yikkes ) under sail. He stood/sat in the hatch opening and was telling me what to do (main out, jib in, etc.) to make minor course changes to crawl our way through all of the moored boats. A few more lessons and I may feel more comfortable.

This mooring field has very, very tight maneuvering. The sailboats are very close to each other. For example, when we boarded S/V Tadpole yesterday, the rudder of the sailboat in front of me (prevailing ESE winds) was 3 feet from my bow

Anyways, another rung of the sailing learning ladder climbed.

[Tom Javor]

As someone who has sailed a 28 foot, currently 80 year old, classic for many years there is very little that can match the pleasure of being able to sail off and on the mooring. It's so much more peaceful - once you get the hang of it you'll wish you could leave the OB ashore pemanently.

It all comes down to knowing the wind direction and understanding how your boat handles when pointed up very high - and at what point in conjunction with the current wind speed she'll stall.

There will be a learning curve but everyone goes through it, it will become second nature. And realize we all make our share of mistakes - after my first few attempts (on a mooring right in front of the bar of the local yacht club - much easier without anaudience)
to do it singe handed I swear one arm was a few inches longer than the other.

One again - congratulations. What's the old adage? and I'm sure I'll misquote it - good boats sail without engines, it's the sailors that need them.

Of course that can all change based on local mooring fied conditions.

[Bob Owens]

Dear Sea Hunt,
Congratulations on your new skill level. It is indeed very satisfying--and a confidence-builder--to know that you don't need to motor. As you relish this accomplishment, can I add a word of caution? Even though our mooring field is far less congested than yours (30' at least between boats), I always have my motor running and not in gear when I sail on or off the mooring. Experience has taught me that a problem can develop in an instant (e.g., broken line, something fouls your rudder, unforeseen gust of wind) and you have no margin for error when you are surrounded closely by other boats. Being able quickly to throw your engine in gear and stay in control of your boat could make the difference between being injured or not, or damaging somebody's $100,000+ boat or not. FWIW
Best, Bob

[John Danicic]

Ah! the joy of sailing on to and off a mooring.

When I was the proud owner of Moana a Typhoon Weekender #911, that was the only way to go sailing. To leave the mooring, simply set all the sail you need with the sheets slack, go forward and untie the pennant from your bow cleat. Walk back to the tiller. Your Ty will start moving backward and with a simple twist of the rudder in the opposite of the direction that you want the bow to go. Soon you will tighten the jib sheet and then the main. And off you go. Sometimes I would scull the rudder to get the proper heading.

Returning is the art of sailing at its finest. Work your way up wind to your mooring so that you can head up just as you approach. See if you can get the wind to stop your Ty with the mooring at the bow, slack the sheets, tie down the tiller, wall forward and reach down and grab the pennant and you're done. This takes practice as conditions vary. When you do it so that the boat stops right at the mooring you will experience a great sense of accomplishment.

I found that by tying down the tiller amidships, sitting at the bow with the forstay between my legs and using a long canoe paddle was an effective way to paddle the boat home when the wind failed.

I miss that boat.

Sail on

John Danicic
CD36 - Mariah - #124
Lake Superior - The Apostle Islands
CDSOA # 655

[GLutzow]

In the 28 some years that I owned my Typhoon Weekender I never once had a motor on it. We sailed on/off moorings as well as docks with no problems. The ship is extremely maneuverable and I still regret selling it.

[Duncan]

The best sailing I had last summer was goofing around sailing for five days while waiting for engine parts, it was so easy and fun. I realized I'd been hornswoggled by the idea that "you need an engine".

I never once had any sort of problem I couldn't solve. It also felt very satisfied with sailing up to anchor, sidling into a slip, and generally sailing the boat as she was meant to sail. I didn't mind a bit, waiting around when the wind didn't co-operate.

It's "nice" to have the ole 'thumper' around, ready to push the boat where you'd like to go, but it's not really sailing. I give myself a star in the logbook, every day when I sail without ever turning on the engine.

[Paul D.]

I have sailed on and off our mooring very often in our 33 for the past seven seasons. It is wonderful and one of the simple joys of sailing and for those concerned with looking good, one of the great challenges too! Cause if you screw it up...everyone knows, and trust me, in a tourist town, they are watching.

I was lucky as the Grand Marais harbor mooring area had space and local sailors put up with my sailing around near their boats. But I developed skills with our boat that gave me some real confidence in how she reacts in different conditions. Shooting the mooring just right was always a great feeling.

One summer I started the motor three times between deliveries across the big lake. So really, if you have the set up and the conditions are right, you can do this on any size CD and I reckon we should all try it more often. I sort of regret being at a dock this season for the first time because I will now only be able to sail on and off the anchor.

But maybe the folks in the marina won't care if only once in a while....

All the best,
Paul

[Sea Hunt]

Thanks for all of the encouragement. Much appreciated.

I should have mentioned in my earlier post that in our mooring field the tides can actually have a more significant effect than the wind on how some of the sailboats lie to their moorings. As I understand it, because there is a "finger island" (not sure which finger, but I can guess ) separating Biscayne Bay from our mooring field, it significantly reduces the wind on sailboats that are moored closer to the island. For those sailboats the tide generally has a greater effect unless the wind velocity is very high.

Prevailing winds on Biscayne Bay and the mooring field are generally ENE, E, ESE. The tide within our mooring field, however, runs N and S. Thus, some sailboats lie to their mooring pointing Easterly; that is, those that are further away from the finger island and are not "shielded" from the wind by the finger island. However, those sailboats that are close to the finger island (and "shielded") point either N or S depending on the tide table. It makes for an interesting (in my case scary) departure/arrival dilemma.

There are several sailing club members who own CDs and post on this board. Hopefully, one or more of them will more accurately explain the uniqueness of this mooring field.

Coupled with all of the above, the moorings are VERY close together. Pretty much no room for error. Having a "plan B" is important, but not always possible to implement given the uniqueness of the mooring field.

Bob Owens - I think it is sound advise to have my O/B running in neutral just as a safety factor - at least for the first 50-60 times I try to depart under sail.

30' between boats Wow Such luxury

[Steve Laume]

I sail off of my mooring, virtually every time out. The exception would be if there is no apparent wind and I have somewhere to go.

I also sail back on a great deal of the time. Shooting back up to the mooring is mostly a matter of experience and judging the wind strength along with the waves as to how far downwind you make your turn upwind. The stronger the wind and or bigger the waves the shorter the run. It also allows for less margin of error.

When I leave the mooring I don't really let the boat drift backwards. Our spacing is fairly close among some boats too. I always get the sails up unsheeted, wait for the boat to swing into the direction I want to go. I then drop the pennant and back wind the jib for a moment. This moves the boat very quickly into an attitude where I can walk back to the helm sheet in the sails and be gone. I imimmediately gain momomentum and good steering control in the direction I have decided I want to go.

I also don't leave my engine running. Keeping fenders handy might be good. I think that when single handing if a problem were to ococcurhat I felt I need the engine It might be too late to dash back there and use it. Mostly it would take some of the sport out of things.

I do think about my anchor as an emergency stop if there should be a problem in the mooring field. I consider this more when I am counting on the motor than the sails. I can see the sails are working and there are two of them. When I cast off with the motor I am counting, entirely, on a pretty complex piece of man made machinery.

All this said and generally feeling pretty smug about my abilities I could tell you one good story about nearly T boning a brand new Hunter moored right next to me with the owners aboard.

It was blowing hard and I had a double reefed main and staysail. I confidently made my approach, released the sheets, shot up to the mooring, picked up the pennant and secured it to the cleat. Lookin good an feeling fine I glanced over at the Hunter couple who were very close along side. This is about when the main sheet didn't run quiet free enough to keep the boat from reaching off. Will her skipper still straddling the cleats on the bow
Raven took aim amidships on the Hunter! I have never seen anyones eyes bigger than those staring back at me and I am sure mine reflected theirs. If the engine would have been running I would have never made it to the helm before the crunch. Fortunately the pennant caught up before the shattering of thin fiberglass. Raven jerked onto the other tack before burrowing her bow roller into that shiny new topside.

I then went back to he cockpit and freed up the main sheet. There was a tremendous amount of apologizing on my part. There was swearing never to do that again. There may also have been some emptying of shorts. There were also renewed requests to more evenly distribute the mooring spacing. There were certainly some lessons learned.

So when you are feeling pretty confident and everything seems to be going fine it is always a good idea to look behind you, Steve.

[Oswego John]

Call me lazy, call me chicken, call me a fuddy duddy, call me anything that you want as long as you don't call me late for dinner.

I pick up my mooring in a slightly different manner. I guess that I could say that I never had the problem of being moored in a tight field. I always had ample room to maneuver and had a good space for a margin of error.

I never cared much for scrambling up on the foredeck while the boat was moving, (that's just me) especially when the weather was heavy. I liked to glide up to windward of the buoy, spill the air out of the sails and drift toward the mooring ball.

I would stand in the cockpit and snag the pennant with a boathook. I had a handline fastened to the bow cleat, through the chock and passed around my shrouds. On the other end of the handline was a snaphook which I secured to the pennant eye.

Only after the boat was unable to drift, would I go up on the bow deck, haul in the handline and tie up properly. Chicken? Yeah, maybe. About all I can say is that after doing this procedure hundreds of times, I'm still here and able to describe the procedure to others. Unorthodox? Maybe.

Have a good day,
O J

[Bob Owens]

Looks as though I am the least courageous of this crew, with my tendency to sacrifice aesthetics in order to have the engine ready for quick back-up in the mooring field. Also, like OJ, when single handed and the wind is up I use a hand-line to the bow cleat so that I can pick up the mooring without leaving the cockpit. I am surrounded by high-priced 30-40' boats, and that 2-3 seconds it takes me to get from the bows back to the cockpit is long enough to put my boat up against one of them in a 15+ kt wind if the pick-up failed. I am not so cautious in very light air, although even in mild conditions I have discovered that my 61-year-old arms cannot fend off the bulk of my CD27 as well as they used to.
Bob

[mattlydon]

I used to sail on-off my mooring 99% of the time - in fact, 2 years ago I went the whole season with my outboard out of service - no problem (never became becalmed, either, though REAL close).

Last season, I moved my sailing to the Hudson river - man, what a difference. Try picking up a mooring with a good breeze blowing and the river running 3-4 knots straight upwind!

[drysuit2]

Hey, Sea Hunt a/k/a "The Tadpole Sailor" ,

Good for you, any new skills, are good skills.

In the summer I sail from a mooring as well. So I find myself having to run the engine from time to time just to top off my batteries. I try to run them at the mooring before I go sailing. That way when I return to the mooring I don't have to ruin my high with engine noise.

Just remember, that if you run your engine as back up when you sail to your mooring, you are no longer a sailboat as far as the rules of the road go. You are now a power boat: in gear or not. Important to remember in a crowded mooring field.

I'm still trying to perfect docking with out scratching up my hull. Engine or no engine; I suck at pulling into a slip.

[Paul D.]

A great trick I learned when I was instructing sailing on Lake Superior years ago was this. If you have someone else aboard, give them a fender and have them ready to drop it between you and anything you are about to bump into.

This simple technique has saved my rubrail more than once and it gives someone something fairly clear what to do. It is also good to go over your plan of sailing on or off and have them positioned in the most likely spot to prevent a scrape. Makes the skipper feel more relaxed too.

All the best,
Paul.

[John Vigor]

Just remember, that if you run your engine as back up when you sail to your mooring, you are no longer a sailboat as far as the rules of the road go. You are now a power boat: in gear or not. Important to remember in a crowded mooring field.

Drysuit, are you quite sure about the "in gear or not" part?

The international and inland rules of the road state:

"Rule 3 (b) The term 'power-driven vessel' means any vessel propelled by machinery."

If your engine is not in gear, it is not propelling the vessel.

But Rule 3 (c) states: "The term sailing vessel means any vessel under sail provided that the propelling machinery, if fitted, is not being used."

The operative word here is "used." When an engine is running in neutral, is it being "used" in this context?

What does everybody think?

Incidentally, ocean racing craft are forbidden to use their engines for propulsion, but may run them in neutral to charge batteries without penalty. For this purpose, they may be required to lock their propeller shafts in place with seals that can be inspected.

John V.

http://www.johnvigor.com/blog.html