Question on mooring bridle for Typhoon

[OveRCs]

Hello All, Good news is that CD Typhoon G-24 open daysailer has made it to Bermuda and is sitting "on de docks mon" awaiting customs clearance.

Bad news is, I swam out to my mooring yesterday to discover my nylon bridle had disappeared! Can someone advise recommended length & diameter of line needed to construct a bridle for a Typhoon. I will be bringing bridle to the boat via a chain & swivel from beneath the buoy, over the bow to the cleat on the center foredeck. So again, how much line will I need if I want the bridle to hang down to just above the waterline?

I will also need to connect to a safety chain. Any suggestions on where & how to best connect to safety chain would be appreciated.

Thanks!

[Sea Hunt]

Hello Ron:

Congratulations on getting your Typhoon Daysailor to Bermuda.

I have a Typhoon Weekender but I am guessing the center bow cleat, distance to chocks, freeboard, etc. is about the same.

I have a large white mooring ball which attaches from below to a heavy chain going down to a large train engine wheel (or so I am told by the club's experts). On the top of the mooring ball I have what I call a "double eye swivel". One end attaches to the heavy chain; the other attaches to the two pendants (sp ). One pendant is 1/2" diameter 3 strand; the other is 5/8" diameter 3 strand. Both are 8 feet in total length after making eye splices in both ends - a small one for the "double eye swivel" with a metal insert in the eye splice and a large one (~6" - 8") to go over the horn cleat on the bow. In my mooring field at the sailing club this allows the bow to normally rest a couple of feet away from the mooring ball but still be close enough to the mooring ball so that it does not get too close to the other sailboats moored very close to me when the sailboats start "sailing" on their moorings.

Hope this help.

[Joe Myerson]

Ron,

Sea Hunt has described a mooring harness pretty clearly.

However, I would recommend that one of your pennants ( Sp?) should be about two feet LONGER than the other. That way, the second, or auxiliary, pendant ( Sp?) will only take up the strain if the primary one should fail.

Congratulations on receipt of the boat.

--Joe

[Klem]

The purpose of the pendant is not only to connect the boat to the mooring but also to provide shock absorption. The longer the pendant, the more shock absorption you will have which is very important if you are in an anchorage where it could get rough in a storm. The pendant will also be stretchier if it is smaller in diameter.

However, a small diameter pendant is a bad idea because it is more likely to fail catastrophically. During a storm or even normal use, the pedant will slowly chafe through so the rated working load needs to be much greater than the loads you expect to experience.

For these reasons, I would suggest 5/8" pendants with length of 12' and 15'. Check to make sure that you don't have local regulations that determine what you need to have also.

[Sea Hunt]

During a storm or even normal use, the pedant will slowly chafe through so the rated working load needs to be much greater than the loads you expect to experience.

Klem's post reminded me that I forgot to mention something. On both pendants I also installed 2 feet of clear but reinforced rubber tubing (as chafing protection) with an inside diameter a little bigger than the 3 strand line and secured them in place to the mooring lines with tie wraps after I cut small holes in the tubing. The tubing is positioned so that it is equally distributed on both sides of the port and starboard chocks.

Our mooring field is well protected from most storms but it is very, very crowded with sailboats very close to each other. The longest pendant the dockmaster would allow me to install was 8 feet.

[Klem]

Sea Hunt brings up a good point that an integral part of the pendant is the chafe gear that you need to add to it. Many people have their own personal preference for what they feel is best but in my mind, the place to look is at the failures and why they occurred.

Most of us will use some form of a nylon pendant. If you can splurge for a Yale pendant, they are much better but they are more costly. Nylon's biggest enemy is heat so keeping the line cool is just as important as making sure that there are no sharp objects that could chafe it. On many failed mooring pendants, there has been evidence of the line actually melting then becoming more abrasive and accelerating chafe.

Traditionally chafe protection has been made of tubing or fire hose which did a decent job with regular chafe protection but helped the line to overheat. Modern chafe gear usually allows water into the line for cooling and lubricating purposes. You can buy this more modern chafe gear at the local marine store or many people use pieces of 2" tubular webbing slid over the line which is essentially the same thing but cheaper. If you are splicing, be aware that you often have to insert the chafe gear before making the last splice.

There was an interesting paper written by some people from MIT after hurricane Bob about mooring pendants. They concluded that nylon has much better stretch properties but that polyester line has much better chafe protection. Their final conclusion was that combination pendants should be used with polyester going from the bow cleat and through the chock then being attached to nylon to go to the mooring ball. They tested this using an instron machine which can apply cyclical loads but I don't know of anyone who actually uses this type of pendant. My concern would be the connection of the two lines but their testing showed that this wasn't the most likely failure point. If you want to read the paper, a quick google search should pull it up.

Going along with chafe gear, you need to protect the pendants from the mooring as well. The danger is that the pendants can wrap around the top chain and ball and chafe that way. The best way to deal with this is to put small floats along the pendant so it always pulls up and away and can't wrap.

I realize that this went beyond your original question but I hope that it is helpful.

[OveRCs]

Thanks so much for your learned comments. That's what really makes this board special!