Checking the mooring

Today was a bit of a mixed day... I started by taking a walk at nearby Longwood Gardens before heading up to Keyport for the evening.  I checked with Pedersen's where Gary confirmed that SEAS THE DAY will be ready once he has confirmation that my mooring has been inspected.

A bit of background... there have been an increasing number of incidents where moorings have broken loose in the KYC mooring field over the past couple of years, so our fleet captain ordered an inspection of the whole field.  The first step is to have your mooring set up and then the inspector comes out and pulls it, checking the entire set-up.

Underneath the ball and pick-up stick, is this system...

A bit about our moorings... under the "balls" out in the harbor, lie a complex system designed to hold the ships in place, but still allow for a fair bit of movement as tides, winds, currents and yes, storms have their way.  The diagram below is borrowed from Chapman: Piloting and Seamanship (more on that another day).  On the seafloor lies a mushroom anchor, a several hundred pound hunk of iron shaped like a mushroom (which unlike the diagram, usually lies on its side and digs into the bottom). Attached to that is some heavy chain and some lighter chain.  Here at KYC, attached to the top of the light chain are two pendants (ropes with eye's in them) that get attached to a boat.  If done right, the light chain is the depth of the water at highest tide and only extreme wind, storms, etc., can lift the heavy chain and if all else fails, the anchor can drag slowly along the bottom. 

Since I was at KYC for the "After The Boatyard Party", and today was the first day of launch service, I decided to catch a launch and head out to see what was there.  With hope, everything would be installed and ready for inspection.

I walked out on the KYC dock and saw that they had replaced the dinghy line that was lost in last Fall's storm.

 I caught the launch (Deliverance) with Ray and headed out.

Looking back, I could see the Harborview Condos on the left.  (I happen to know that one of these is for sale... please let me know if you're interested.)

Once we got out, we found my mooring ball!  So everything is set up.  Hopefully the inspections will go smoothly and we'll be in the water sometime this week.

Only one other boat has been launched...

So we headed back to the dock, and I went and visited John (my son) before heading home.