LESSON 7: LANDING AT THE MOORING

A mooring is a gigantic anchor and long chain on the bottom of the harbor. It is attached to a buoy or two buoys floating on the surface. When you want to stop sailing and secure the boat, one option is to pick up a mooring buoy and tie it to the bow of the boat.

Once you are safely secured to a mooring, you can lower the sails or turn off the engine, tidy up the boat and relax.

Picking up a mooring is often done under power, but here is how you do it under sail (in case you are sailing on a boat without an engine). Try steering the boat directly into the wind, and see how long it takes to stop. Because the sails cannot work when headed in this direction (toward the 12), the boat will gradually lose momentum. Depending on the speed at which you begin heading for the 12, and the force of the wind and current on the boat, the distance the boat will travel may vary from less than one boat length to three or four.

To pick up your mooring correctly, you steer the boat into the wind from a point downwind of the mooring, judging your distance so that the boat is just about stopped when the bow reaches the mooring buoy. Someone standing on the bow then picks up the buoy and secures it to the boat. Most moorings have a line with an eyesplice forming a loop which we conveniently slip over the cleat on our bow deck. However, it's good to know how to cleat the line in case the eyesplice isn't there or how to tie a bowline (which will work just as well as an eyesplice) forming a loop in the line to slip over the bow cleat.



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