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Mooring villains
I feel I must be morphing into Victor Meldrew, because so many people seem to piss me off so easily these days...
Much has been written about damage caused to two boats at Ribex on another thread, due to a lack of care by another ribster.
On the Sunday of the Whitsun weekend, Yarmouth was absolutely heaving with ribs and we rafted up about 5 out. We took a stern line to the wall to straighten our raft and went off for lunch, checking on the boat every 20-30 minutes. (Yes, I plead guilty to the anal allegation)
When we went back, there was a 5m blue Avon from the raft behind contentedly nuzzling up against our engine casing, as the raft inshore was hopelessly twisted. I rummaged through the Avon's lockers and put a couple of his lines together so that I could straighten his raft with a sternline from his boat to the quay. Bugger me if he hadn't taken it off 20 minutes later when we went to check on our boat again !
But today takes the biscuit. We moored up 4 out with a Coastline 7.5m, inboard diesel with a bit of teak on the engine casing, inside of us. We used three fenders between our boat and this Coastline and moored up securely using painter, sternline and a single spring as the tide was beginning to drop.
We emerged into the bright daylight to find that the Coastline had gone, our spring and painter had simply been cast adrift and just our sternline was tied onto the rib inshore with a scope of around 14 feet, which meant that our boat was now free to clatter any one of three boats in the raft ahead. The crew of the rib to which we were now tied, said that they had helped to tie the Coastline up in the firstplace because their crew didn't seem to have a clue.
I will also accept a charge of being a snob in some matters, but I just think these people are inconsiderate scum.
Rant over.
Victor
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