Easy Go Mooring

A group of like minded friends got together and installed some really good moorings for our boats. They are made from surplussed railway car wheels with the axles cut in half. To the top end of the axle a one inch chain link is welded. To this link is added thirty feet (9m) of one inch chain and a swivel at the surface end of the chain. In our installation the chain is longer than the depth of the water so that the swivel can be raised to the surface for checking and replacement as necessary. A buoy is also attached at this point so that in the event the riser chain is dropped a diver can still located the ground chain for retrieval from the bottom mud. The mud here is very deep!

For the Easy Go mooring we attached fifty feet of riser chain to the ground chain swivel with a loop in the end so that the chain can be led over the bow roller and slipped over the bits providing a chain connection from the boat to the mooring anchor. A snubber will be attached to the chain to provide some shock absorption. The mooring ball is attached to fifty feet of floating half inch rope so that the chain rests entirely on the bottom when not in use. This reduces wear and corrosion on the chain considerably.

The mooring weight is about 1500 lbs and with the extra chain is approaching one ton of anchoring weight. The location for these moorings is relatively protected and the bottom is deep mud.

If one were to locate these on a hard bottom in an exposed location considerably more weight and potentially a different design of the anchor would be required.

We have a photo essay of the process located in our Picassa Web Albums