Mooring bridle

[Cat nap2]

An unfortunate happened at the YC a couple of weeks ago.
Our mooring pendants are made of 5/8in three strand nylon. The bow cleats on a new members boat were to small for this line so he fastened a 1/2in threestrand nylon line to one cleat, passed it through the mooring pennant eye and then back to another bow cleat. Everything was fine until we had a blow of 20 to 30 kts for a bay and a half. After this time the larger line chafed through the smaller line and the boat ended on the beach. There was no apparent damage to the mooring pennant.
The question is what type of connection should be made between the bridle and the mooring pennant???
Would a Prusik not be appropriate or would some other type of knot be better. (nothing requiring splicing)
Thanks. Cat Nap

[Cotemar]

Always look to fix the ROOT cause.
In this case, LARGER CLEATS would be on order.

[Sun and Moon]

His mistake was passing one line from cleat, through pendant and back to the other cleat. Every time the boat moved it chafed on his line. Better practice would be two lines, one from each cleat, through or tied to the pendant and back to the same cleat.

[FSMike]

If he had just wrapped it around the larger line once or twice that would probably have prevented the problem. It's hard for something to chafe if it can't move.

[fallingeggs]

Two options off the top of my head (probably because I use both approaches).

1) Learn to splice and make a dyneema strop to attach the big mooring pendant to the smaller cleat. The dyneema will be small enough for the cleat, but has extreme chafe resistance. You just need to make to eye splices on the dyneema. The splice is extremely easy and can be done with a coat hanger, $20 of dyneema and whipping twine.

2) Get a smaller, more robust, mooring pendant. Check out the yellow Maximoor lines. Have this as the fail safe and a smaller, shorter 3-strand for some elasticity. This way the Maximoor only get used in a blow. Just replace the 3-strand when it starts to chafe or after a year or two.

-Stephen

[thinwater]

Originally Posted by Sun and Moon

His mistake was passing one line from cleat, through pendant and back to the other cleat. Every time the boat moved it chafed on his line. Better practice would be two lines, one from each cleat, through or tied to the pendant and back to the same cleat.

Bingo. He built a saw. I will further bet that his boat is nervous at anchor, made even worse by the sliding bridle. He should have noticed the motion.

[tkeithlu]

It's not elegant, but in the immediate a prussic or better yet a double prussic (around twice, working to the inside, and then thread both ends through the loop) should have stopped the sawing. Two looped lines around the pendant, one for each side, would not stop the sawing. Two tied to the pendant with clove hitches or two half hitches would. The point is that if you tie on, your knot must constrict around the pendant, not be a fixed length loop that can slide. Ergo, fixed loop bowlines would not be good.