Mooring Loads

[Russ]

A couple of years ago, tropical storm Ernesto hit the Jersey coast. Although not a hurricane, the long duration of the winds whipped up the bay pretty bad. Dozens of boats that were moored were lost including a $250k boat that belonged to a friend of ours. They found the boat bashed into the Navy pier in Sandy hook bay. The Navy called him and said "I think your boat is at the bottom of our pier." A total loss and a beautiful boat.
The lucky ones got blown up on beaches, some were found in Staten Island beaten up on rocks.
Read about it here including the finding of the Fleet captain of the Raritan Yacht club.


http://rbps.org/ernesto_and_its_aftermath.htm

Several failure reasons were identified from the mooring line fatigue. The boats were bobbing so violently that many either snapped their pennants or ripped bow cleats right out. Others chaffed right through. One interesting cause was from bow anchors cutting pennants or coming lose and chaffing through pennants.
My father drove down during the storm and said boats were bouncing like bucking broncos.

I'm convinced that many failures occurred because of lack of stretch to the pennants that either caused bow cleats to rip out or lines to snap. If I were mooring my boat, I would have as much spring to my line as possible. Also, secure bow anchors and hardware.

[Catigale]

OUCH!

[eric3a]

..

[Russ]

This was my friends boat. The bow cleats ripped right out of the reinforced fiberglass. The boat was found sunk at the Leonardo Navy pier. It was a gorgeous boat (a Passport 42) with electric furling mainsail that rolled into the mast. The mast alone cost as much as many of our boats. Snapped right off.
The waves pounded it chewing up the keel and creating a 6 foot hole in the side. Ironically, the boat was for sale at the time. The insurance company bought him a new boat.

[James V]

This is interesting, both cases were caused by the waves and not the wind itself. Most of the harbor moorings in the Bahamas are protected from the waves and have had boats moored during hurricanes with out any ill effect. With the exception of tidal surge and boats dragging anchor into them.

[Russ]

This is interesting, both cases were caused by the waves and not the wind itself. Most of the harbor moorings in the Bahamas are protected from the waves and have had boats moored during hurricanes with out any ill effect. With the exception of tidal surge and boats dragging anchor into them.

Yes it is interesting.

The mooring my friends boat is kept at is normally protected very well from waves, not so much from wind by a large breakwater. Just inside the breakwater it's normally very calm, but wind blows over it and causes a lot of windage on sailboat masts.


This time, the wind blew from the East (not typical) and right down parallel with the breakwater rendering it useless. Waves churned up this normally peaceful harbor. It was also high tide and there was little slack on the mooring lines to take up the bronco bucking boats.