This bulletin board, hosted by the CDSOA, Inc., is the on-line meeting place for all Cape Dory owners and groups. We welcome everyone's questions, answers and comments about Cape Dory sailboat
My CD 27 will be on a mooring this year; the town requires 2 pennants and I will be providing my own.
At MaineSail's suggestion, I am going to go with the expensive (but I think worth it) MaxiMoor II pennants. I don't want my baby going anywhere
Any suggestions on diameter / length pennant for the CD 27? From what I have read, it sounds like 3/4 inch by 16 footers would be appropriate. I am not sure the 7/8 inch will fit through my chocks, though I like the idea of going oversized. Is my length appropriate?
If I am reading your signature correctly, you are on a mooring in Falmouth? Given that Falmouth can get quite rough, I would go as long as you can without causing problems. By problems, I refer to being too different from other boats and too long resulting in keel wrap (thankfully Cape Dory's hull shape makes this unlikely). If it were me, I would do one 16' and one 20' lashed together as shown on Maine Sail's website. With them being 4' different, you would need to make sure that the loop in the backup pendant is kept to a minimum so it can't go under your mooring ball and chafe the pendant.
For diameter, I would think that 3/4" would be appropriate. We used 3/4" Yale pendants on our CD30 in a similarly exposed location.
Of course, make sure that whatever you choose meets the town regulations. I know that there are a few members here with boats in Falmouth that may know some more location specific info.
Apologies, I should have clarified. The boat will be in the mooring field in Salem MA on an oversized granite mooring.
Salem is a mooring field that I know well, it is actually where we keep our new boat. It has the same general exposure issues as Falmouth, especially if you are on the western side of the harbor. Our total pendant length is 20' on our short pendant and 22' on our long one but our cleats are 5' from the fairlead on the bow so we sit 15' back from the ball. This is longer than most in Salem harbor but there is plenty of room for it. I think that a 16' and a 20' would work well for you.
The webcam just got back up and running in Salem today after being out for a few weeks and it appears that they are still do some major work in the center of the harbor but there are a few boats starting to show up on moorings. We will be in a week from now.
Just another opinion. I've got a CD 28 on a mooring in Brooklyn, NY. After calling around to a few places I decided to go with two 5/8" x 10' pendants (Yale Maxi-Moor). They're more than up to the task, especially with two of them. I'm in a very tight mooring field and 10' is as long as I can go. You wouldn't have this exact problem on your 27 but when using two pendants, there's always a slack pendant hanging around the bow and on the 28' I'm finding it gets hung up on the lower bobstay chainplate.
