Picking up a mooring with a bow sprit

[carlosproa]

So I do this on a cat with one engine and solo.
First the set up ahead of picking the mooring. Let say you pick the port bow.
Run the stbd line under the bowsprit all the way to the port bow. You need to have at least twice the length of the width between bows. Tie the line to the port pulpit.
Second, determine if the current is greater than the wind.
Approach the mooring against the pressing wind or current whichever is strongest
Pick up the mooring from the port bow and have the mooring as close to that bow as possible
Let the boat settle
You should now be able to slip the stbd line that was tied to the port pulpit into the eye of the mooring ball or line.
After that walk the stbd line across to the stbd cleat, and adjust so each line is equidistant.
Make sure each line starts and loop back to their original bow and avoid them to cross or touch each other.
When time comes to leave, release the windward line first so the boat is best positioned at an angle to the wind.
All of this can be done solo with one outboard engine with no remote controls. I do it all the time, just be patient. If you have two engines then is a no brainer

[Tin Tin]

To avoid the mooring ball banging the hull in wind against tide situations the ball needs to be centered between the bows so it can not reach either hull. So first job is to attach the mooring pendant to a front cleat, if it reaches the cleat great, you can take you time. If not and it just makes it to the deck take a pre-rigged mooring line and thread it through and back to original cleat and tie off. Let the boat settle. Then get the other mooring line and using a special boat hook run the slack line through the top of the mooring ball shackle. Then adjust the two line so there is only about 6 - 8 ft play. So what is looks like : Mooring line to ball shackle and back on one side and pendant to adjusted mooring line and back on the other. The special boat hook we used was a "hook and moor" https://www.hookandmoor.com/ there are other types available.

[Sbpoint]

Catana 47 owner here. We finally figured it out.

I pull up with the ball in view on the starboard bow. We’ve run 2 lines from the port out in front of the sprit and whiskers. One is the mooring line. The other is a “puller” line with and integrated soft shackle terminating on the starboard bow. We pull the pendant, run both mooring lines through the end and toss it over. Priority is to tie up starboard at the designated mark. Next attach the soft shackle to the end of the port mooring line (has a loop spliced) that has already gone through the mooring pendent. Toss it out in front and walk over to port and pull the “puller” line attached to the mooring line in until you have the mooring line in hand. Tie it off and you’re done.

With this method both starboard and port are run through at the same time and if something doesn’t go right you have starboard tied off. We’ve yet to muck it up with this strategy. Takes an extra second to run the puller line over from port but worth it as my wife no longer yells at me.