April 16, 2012
Amazing!! -– Slow Dance now on her very own storm mooring!
A few weeks ago, I and Ken Hix, a St. Marys boatyard acquaintance and good friend from Breckenridge,CO, were discussing future cruising possibilities and where we might find safe havens from hurricanes. One safe spot could be right here on the North River in St. Marys, Georgia, Ken said.
It seems that a few years ago the former manager of the St. Marys boatyard had placed two very substantial mooring "anchors" in the river for his own boat and that of a friend. The anchors, weighing well over 1000 lbs, were composed of a number of inch-thick steel plates about two feet square held together by a stainless steel eye bolt which was shackled to a number of links of large ship anchor chain (my mushroom anchor mooring in Maine had such chain which Earl and George of Islesboro Marine termed "Coast Guard chain"). A 1 ¼ line ran from the chain to a mooring ball on the surface.
Ken said the current manager of the boatyard wanted to have nothing to do with the moorings and that Ken had taken possession of one mooring which was in deep water (10 ft. at low tide) and that the other was in shallower water, making it unfit for large monohulls like his, but he thought it might be fine for my shallow draft (3 ft.) catamaran. Ken added that he doubted there was a robust enough line running up from the anchor to which I could attach my boat, but that last year he had participated in the "rescue" of what was once the oldest working tugboat in the country, right here close to the boatyard, and had thereby obtained several very heavy hawsers. He had installed one on the mooring he was using and that I could have one if I wished. He suggested I ask the present manager if I could take possession of that mooring.
I immediately told Ken I would love to have a hawser. The yard manager told me I could have the mooring and Ken brought me the hawser which was over twenty feet long, almost three inches in diameter, and had a huge eye with a thick steel thimble to prevent chafe spliced into one end. I bought a very large swivel of one inch steel from Searsport (and now Portland) Maine's very successful marine outfitter Wayne Hamilton. The swivel will allow the boat to swing and turn without kinking the hawser. I attached the swivel to the hawser's eye with a one inch shackle and will use two 7/8 inch shackles to attach ¾ inch lines forming a bridle fastened to Slow Dance's bows.
Ken Hix said our two strong moorings now give us peace of mind. I concur, and will add that this comfort extends to whenever Slow Dance is back here in south Georgia. I say this because recently my boat was hauled so that I could attach a metal grounding plate to the hull for the high frequency radio I shall soon install. Several days after I re-anchored in the river, Slow Dance dragged anchor on a calm day. Turns out the chain had wrapped itself into a large ball around a modest size tree branch (no, we don't have an underwater forest growing in the North River:) and somehow another segment of chain was wrapped around the anchor itself and prevented its flukes from digging into the bottom mud.
So now scarcely a day passes that I don't go up to the bows to relish the sight of my robust mooring bridle, shackles and swivel and that mighty hawser disappearing into the depths. And when hurricane season arrives in late August, I'll stand on my cat's bow trampoline and shout into the wind, "Bring it on!"
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