Quick Mooring lines...

[robtheplod]

Came across these the other day - https://www.tradline.co.uk/14mm-jester-eye-splice--piling-hook-708-p.asp anyone used them?  they seem like a good idea but obviously restrict you to Armco and maybe cant keep the ropes maybe as tight?  lockdown is certainly making me do more research!

[Jen-in-Wellies]

4 minutes ago, robtheplod said:

Came across these the other day - https://www.tradline.co.uk/14mm-jester-eye-splice--piling-hook-708-p.asp anyone used them?  they seem like a good idea but obviously restrict you to Armco and maybe cant keep the ropes maybe as tight?  lockdown is certainly making me do more research!

I have a home made version used when single handing. Attached to the roof centre rope eye, a short length of rope with a piling hook on the end. Good for mooring up to piling in an off shore wind. Otherwise, as you tie up one end of the boat, the other is blown across the cut. Dropping the centre eye piling hook in to the Armco keeps the boat sort of in position while you set up the bow and stern lines, after which it can be taken out and put back on the roof. Also good for temporarily securing the boat in a queue at a lock while you make a brew.

Not essential, but very useful at times.

Jen

[Slim]

A much better idea is to take a piling hook, weld an 18 " bar with tee handle to it. No bending to engage / disengage hook.

1 minute ago, Jen-in-Wellies said:

I have a home made version used when single handing. Attached to the roof centre rope eye, a short length of rope with a piling hook on the end. Good for mooring up to piling in an off shore wind. Otherwise, as you tie up one end of the boat, the other is blown across the cut. Dropping the centre eye piling hook in to the Armco keeps the boat sort of in position while you set up the bow and stern lines, after which it can be taken out and put back on the roof. Also good for temporarily securing the boat in a queue at a lock while you make a brew.

Not essential, but very useful at times.

Jen

Got one of those too.

[Jennifer McM]

Have been thinking of something like this. looks's great not only for single boaters, but others too. On a couple of occasions the two of us trying to moor nearly 'lost' the boat in high winds. 

[dor]

And while we are on good ideas, when using piling hooks, look for where the retaining bolts go through and put the hook in behind the bolt if possible, or the space just after the space with the bolt.  This stops the hook jamming between the piling and the armco which can be a pain when you come to leave.

[Captain Fizz]

4 minutes ago, Slim said:

A much better idea is to take a piling hook, weld an 18 " bar with tee handle to it. No bending to engage / disengage hook.

That's not the same idea at all!

[Jen-in-Wellies]

3 minutes ago, dor said:

And while we are on good ideas, when using piling hooks, look for where the retaining bolts go through and put the hook in behind the bolt if possible, or the space just after the space with the bolt.  This stops the hook jamming between the piling and the armco which can be a pain when you come to leave.

Yes. Learnt that one from experience, hitting a hook with a hammer to get it out...

[robtheplod]

interesting... looking at my ropes as they are tired and chaffed. thought a couple of these would be good as well as replace my centre lines.

 

on a 58 foot boat, is 14mm rope ok or would the panel recommend 16mm?

[Jen-in-Wellies]

26 minutes ago, robtheplod said:

interesting... looking at my ropes as they are tired and chaffed. thought a couple of these would be good as well as replace my centre lines.

 

on a 58 foot boat, is 14mm rope ok or would the panel recommend 16mm?

CaRT use blue string for mooring all their work boats, so 14mm should be adequate. On my home mooring I use retired climbing rope and save the fancy hawser laid boaty ropes for cruising.

Jen

[Chewbacka]

2 minutes ago, Jen-in-Wellies said:

CaRT use blue string for mooring all their work boats, so 14mm should be adequate. On my home mooring I use retired climbing rope and save the fancy hawser laid boaty ropes for cruising.

Jen

If money is tight a thinner rope is fine, but pulling the boat in using a thin rope is not comfortable, I much prefer 14 or 16mm for handling.

[Balliol]

19 minutes ago, robtheplod said:

Came across these the other day - https://www.tradline.co.uk/14mm-jester-eye-splice--piling-hook-708-p.asp anyone used them?  they seem like a good idea but obviously restrict you to Armco and maybe cant keep the ropes maybe as tight?  lockdown is certainly making me do more research!

I am amazed that BW/CRT have not banned the use of these hooks years ago!

 

Piling or campshedding is there to protect the banks from the wash from motorboats. Even in its earlier common form, long thick concrete piles with re-purposed railway lines as whaling (most often seen on the Grand Union network) the big problem was stopping ground and hydraulic pressures from pushing the piling over towards the canal. In numerous places you can see where these very substantial concrete piles have bowed over towards the canal. Modern light interlocking sheet steel piles are much weaker, and very often much shorter, so not driven into the ground so far. They are the waterside equivalent of your wooden garden fence, and can be subjected to undue stress by boats pulling directly on them.

 

Piling is usually tied back at intervals, usually nowadays to short offcut lengths of the same sheet steel piles, driven in some 2 metres back from the bank and connected to the piling with steel tie rods, but these ties are not infallible especially in wet ground, and also the modern whalings are usually just light duty steel pressings with little innate strength.

 

The problem could be reduced if boats were tied up properly with long lines extending at least 2 metres fore and aft of the boat, i.e. with an included angle to the bank of less than 45 degrees, preferably nearer 30, such that the mooring ropes are pulling more along the line of the bank, but most people seem now to use the equivalent of short breast ropes at near on right angles to the boat's dollies which mean that the principle component of the pull on the piling is more directly towards the water. Obviously longer lines at suitable angles also reduce the risk of a boat surging as other craft pass. The clank-clank of rattling piling hooks on a badly moored boat is usually the preface to unwarranted shouts of "slow down!"

 

The suggestion of using a cabin centre line with these hooks can be even worse, since the pull is then almost vertical. If the water level changes the buoyancy of the boat can try and lift the piles. The alternative is that it can cause the boat to list, which, if the boat has other underlying health issues (buzz term!) such as dodgy skin fittings, can cause a boat to sink. It happens! I dealt with one case only a couple of months ago where a boat sank simply because the centre line held the boat down as the canal level rose during the recent storms.

 

For the above reasons centre lines, whether to the piling or proper rings or bollards, should never be used for anything other than short term mooring. There are also potential stability issues if using these for anything other than hand control of the boat when locking, but that is digressing from the topic.

 

 

 

 

[Rob-M]

I made my own by splicing a short length of line to a pilling hook, generally use as a temporary point at the stern whilst mooring up single handed.

[Bod]

57 minutes ago, robtheplod said:

Came across these the other day - https://www.tradline.co.uk/14mm-jester-eye-splice--piling-hook-708-p.asp anyone used them?  they seem like a good idea but obviously restrict you to Armco and maybe cant keep the ropes maybe as tight?  lockdown is certainly making me do more research!

I have a home made one.  Very useful, used at the stern when getting off with the centre line, stops the stern from moving out, and if the centreline is used to make the boat move forward, pulls the boat in quicker.

Bow line is then used to pull the boat forward to tighten the stern in.  Moored on only one knot, and no centreline mooring.

Would like to experiment with using this at the bow, crew get off, loop is already over Tee stud, drops hook into Armco, bow cannot move out as stern is motored to bank, again mooring with only one knot, and no centreline used.

 

Bod

[ditchcrawler]

1 hour ago, Captain Fizz said:

That's not the same idea at all!

Its a useful addition

[john6767]

1 hour ago, Rob-M said:

I made my own by splicing a short length of line to a pilling hook, generally use as a temporary point at the stern whilst mooring up single handed.

Same here, but I’m not as posh as you and just used knots to fasten the rope to the piling hook and to make the loop.

[Tam & Di]

2 hours ago, Balliol said:

The alternative is that it can cause the boat to list, which, if the boat has other underlying health issues (buzz term!) such as dodgy skin fittings, can cause a boat to sink. It happens! I dealt with one case only a couple of months ago where a boat sank simply because the centre line held the boat down as the canal level rose during the recent storms.

We encountered a guy with a narrowboat in France who was bleating that he got "tipped" by all these nasty working boats that passed when he was moored. It was the first time we heard the term (and he didn't mean that they threw him a few Euros in appreciation). Obviously as far as he was concerned it was nothing to do with him and his absurd method of tying with a centre line on the coach roof.

 

Tam