The All New Bridle Plate Mooring System

I was astonished!  I was considering leaving my new (to me) Trimaran on  a mooring in the Bahia..  After observing all of the 30 plus boats already on moorings, I couldn’t fathom leaving my boat tied to a mooring ball with any of the methods I had seen.

Most boats had only one line tying it to the mooring ball!!   Some had swivels, some didn’t.   Quite a few had thimbles in the lines that were separating from their lines and the line was beginning to chaffe thru.  All of the mooring systems I saw had hardware, shackles, swivels, etc., that seemed way too small for the up to 40,000 lb boat that was secured with it.  In Particular, I found it very hard to believe that anyone would leave their boat tied to a mooring ball with only one line!!  What happened to the Golden Rule of Redundancy that I read about in all those sailing books??

Well, after doing some investigating by talking to all of the boat owners that I could find (my usual method of learning the “right way” to do things on or about my boat) I learned that most people had their own method of attaching their boat to a mooring ball, and I really couldn’t find much common ground in any of them.  As an engineer, with some knowledge about strength of materials, I really didn’t see or hear about a mooring system that I liked.  Nor did I see or hear about a system that I thought would be appropriate for the type of loads that could be generated by a large and heavy boat floating on moving water and sometimes in bad weather.          

All of the investigating I did only led me in one direction.  In order to leave my boat floating in the Bahia while I went 500 miles away for 1-2 months at a time and have some degree of confidence that my boat wasn’t going to float away, I was going to have to design my own mooring system.

After more investigating and observing mooring systems during and after hurricane Marty in Mexico, I found that there  were two main reasons why boats became separated from their moorings:

1. Line detachment from the Mooring Ball due to chaffe thru on the line.  This is usually due to separation of the lines from the thimbles.  I found the thimble separation was usually due to interference from other thimbles and/or lines attached to the mooring ball with the same shackle.
2. Separation of the lines due to chaffe thru at the boat, usually at the point the boat (with or without chocks) rubbed on the line and not at the cleat.  This can be remedied by adequate chaffe protection on the lines.

1. It allows the use of up to three lines from the mooring ball to your boat for redundancy in case one or more lines separate.
2. The system maintains separation of all the lines and thimbles, virtually eliminating interference and chaffing from the other thimbles and lines.
3. The plate allows the use of up to a very beefy ¾ inch swivel and 5/8 inch shackles for high load carrying capacity.