My insurers insisted that I doubled up on the mooring lines, in order to be able to keep the boat afloat all year around.

Yesterday I went to the boat after several days of F8 gusting F10 and I found that one of the pair of lines , the main rope, had frayed through and the backup was holding the bows. The wind had been pushing the rope hard against the teak gunwhale which had also taken a bit of a beating.

Following a sacrifice of a heavy shore line and some painful splicing (secondhand rope being hard to splice) the boat again has doubled up mooring lines. It was fairly low tide so I could get at the ends of the rope part of the mooring line.

I also put the main line facing the prevailing wind so that it is the fairlead that is rubbing on the rope not the teak. (boat facing south, wind SW so now using starboard fairlead.) Oh for a bow roller.

Thats a pretty close call, and with another storm forecast for midweek I hope everyone is securely moored or safely ashore. I'm on fore and afts so I routinely double all my mooring lines for mine and everyone elses sake. Hopefully I'm safe for now, Margarita is ashore on her cradle for tweeking and fettling following a late but very enjoyable first season (for me!).

Strangely, I was down the boat today and I noticed the backup bow mooring line was rather slack. So I pulled it in and found that the shackle on the end had gone. I had moused the shackle on when I fitted it about a year ago, and I was surprised . I suppose the fact that it spent a lot of time not under a lot of tension as the backup must have let it move more in the tide and wear away.

I had to quickly replace the shackle with one in the spares box onboard, probably need to get a bigger one to take the wear.