Trevor
Our recently acquired Sonata will be kept on a swinging mooring which can sometimes get quite choppy,
Are the mooring cleats strong enough to take the expected snatch loads? I suspect not, so where is the best place in the anchor well to put a U bolt to take a mooring chain?
The rear vertical face is a “no can do” as we have a big oval hole (10″x6″) cut through it.
Is the floor of the well strong enough to take the snatch loads, or do we need to reinforce it? – (it’s backed with 3mm ply)
The boat is more of a racer than a cruiser so big deck-mounted Samson posts are out!
Thanks Trevor
George Jack
Hi there,
I also keep my boat on a swinging mooring which can get a wee tad bouncy. Last year I used a nylon strop onto each cleat which held through a couple of gales with very little chafe. My biggest concern was for chafe as opposed to the strength of the cleats.
What I am contemplating doing for this season is fitting a u-bolt to each side of the outside of the hull, high up close to the bow fairlead, with the attachment bolts in the anchor well. I would attach the twin mooring strop to these u-bolts with a heavy duty snap shackle. This system would virtually eliminate chafe as the mooring rope would not actually touch any part of the boat.
Anyone tried this before or got any input?
Thanks,
George Jack.
peterbooth
Hello Trevor,
I am the mooring secretary at Helensburgh Sailing Club, our mooring area is protected to the North and East but to the West we have a 1nm fetch and to the South a 3nm fetch so we can build up quite a sea especially in southerly gales. We have had Sonatas here since they started building them in 1976 our boat is hull number 6 and she has been here all her life. We moor with something like a 22mm multiplait nylon pennant (sometimes refered to as the junk)with a short piece of plastic hose to protect it from chafe where it passes through the fairlead of the bow. We the pass the pennant round one of the cleats and across in front of the forestay onto the other so some of the weight is taken on both cleats. We then make the pick up buoy line off over each cleat. To the best of my knowledge we have never in 34 years had a problem with the strength of the cleats.
Peter Booth
michael cowper
we moor tea 4-2 on the wall side in scarborough where there is quite a bit of serge we use chain and rope and the cleats hold her fine
Mick
Trevor
Thanks’ for all replies
Good luck for this season – Trevor
Mark Taylor
I kept my first Sonata (Frank 8025N) on a swinging mooring on the Menai Straits from April through to October and she survived many gales, including wind against tide conditions where she was rolling and snatching quite badly. There were ceratinly days when it would have been foolhardy to try and board her so we could only watch from the sailing club (which was unfortunately “dry”…no bar!)
We used to put a heavy nylon strop onto the mooring cleat then use the buoy pick up rope to tie off on the cleat and across to the other cleat. The pick up buoy was dropped into the well to stop it rolling around on deck. One issue we did have was making sure that the strop didn’t chafe and if you cover it with heavy PVC pipe as we did, make sure you smooth off the ends of the pipe so there are no sharp cut edges.
I never had any concerns regarding the strength of the mooring cleats and I’d certainly suggest they are much stronger than any U bolt you could put into what is a quite weak anchor well base. The good news is that the nuts on the cleats are easily accessablwe so if you want you could check that they have suitable backing washers on etc.
regards
Mark
Saraband 8314N