PJ advise

IMPORTANT NOTICE FOR ALL PJ

DRIVERS.

New Mooring for PJ.

By now you will probably be aware that PJ has been moved to a new mooring near the North Wall and nearest the harbour entrance. The new mooring dries out at approx the same time as the old one but this may improve slightly due to the dredging work that has taken place alongside the wall. Getting on and off the mooring is probably marginally more difficult but once we get used to it there should not be a problem. Barry Clouds boat is alongside us and Berry and myself spent some time talking to him, John Wiscombe and others. As a result it has become apparent that we need to make a few changes.

Firstly the mooring layout is as it was previous with the pick up buoy on the starboard side, but we have moved the buoy to about 1 metre from the bow mooring ropes. When returning to pick up the mooring we strongly recommend motoring forward and picking up the bow moorings first rather than trying to reverse onto the mooring. There is nothing close on the port side and the only problem we can envisage is that in a strong SW the bow will tend to be blown off as one moves from running parallel to the wall to heading W. By moving the buoy to nearer the bow lines, the radius of the turn to pick up the buoy is much less severe and your final line is more likely to be ahead of Barry’s bow.  

( In a strong E it is thought that the protection from the wall would still make a forward approach to the mooring preferable. )

Secondly we must tie the tender to the aft port mooring line rather than the pickup buoy, otherwise Barry cannot get back onto his mooring and the tender will bang against Barry’s boat.

Lastly when coming off the mooring in a S or SW take care not to wrap the pick up line around the prop. I would suggest pulling her to port on the fore and aft lines and being prepared to motor to starboard to throw the stern away from the pick up lines.