Mooring to a Buoy

Most mooring consist of a ground chain attached to a heavy object that is buried in the sea bed or anchored at both sides. There is normally a ring on the top of the buoy to moor to. To make picking the mooring up easier, there is often a pick up line attached.

How to do it:

1. Have the boat hook ready
2. If the mooring has a ring on the top: have a mooring line ready so you can attach the line quickly
3. Aim into the wind (or the tide) or look for similar boat and approach the buoy on a parallel heading
4. To see the buoy longer, keep it to one side of the bow
5. To prevent the danger of the line ending up in the propeller or the rudder, the boat should not pass between the main buoy and the pick up one.
6. Once the buoy is out of sight the crew can point the hook at the buoy, to help the driver to position the boat
7. Once the crew has the buoy, the boat needs to be gently reversed until the buoy is on the bow
8. Stop the boat, and keep it stopped (!)  that the crew can attach the boat to the buoy.
9. Pull in the mooring rope until the main line is reached.  If there is no pick up line available the boats mooring line must go through the ring on top of the mooring. (A carbin hook can help a lot).
10. Run the line through the ring and cleat off each end at the bow or tie off one end of the dock line, run the other end through the mooring line loop and then cleat that end at the bow
11. Instead of a single line, which might be o.k. for a short stay, it is best to tie two lines to the buoy. To make sure, the line is not moving too much around the ring use a round turn and two half hitches. Or a bowline, which is easily to undo, but it should have an extra turn around
12. In exposed conditions you might want to shackle the anchorage chain to the buoy.

Some buoys can be quite large and heavy and you might want to hook up stern-first to get closer to the buoy. Then loop a dock line through the ball and walk the line up to your bow. If you go stern-first: take great care not get any lines into the propeller or rudder!

If you do not know the area, make sure the mooring is strong enough to support your boat. Well managed mooring are lifted regularly. But many are not.