Thursday, May 26, 2011

A collision, you don't need

My mooring was supposed to be NE-14, at about the latitude of 89th Street, a big improvement from previous years when the boat was a half-mile or more farther up the choppy churning Hudson. When I arrived, however, NE-14 was maybe 20 feet from NE-13, and the Cap'n on NE-13 was watching my approach with very worried eyes.

I was worried too. There just wasn't enough space between the two moorings. Slack water, cross wind -- the boats would have tangled. No doubt about it.

I circled and circled, trying to make up my mind -- to the point that the Boat Basin guys called my cell phone, wondering what I was up to. (Of course I didn't have the VHF on. Of course. Idiot.)

I finally decided to grab unoccupied NE-15, at least for the time being. The handy-dandy snap hook, discussed here before, did its job flawlessly, and I was able to button up the boat and dinghy back down to the dock, against a fairly strong upstream current, in reasonably short order -- though the mooring pennants, as usual, were tangled up in a nightmarish knot under the water, and I had to half-immerse myself again, sorting them out beneath the buoy. But this sort of thing keeps one's joints limber and one's mind alert, so it's all good, as they say.

At the dock, I encountered NE-13's Cap'n, Hector, a very amiable chap, who definitely thought I did the right thing by avoiding NE-14. The Boat Basin guys thought I was a bit of a wuss -- you can tell -- but they were very forgiving and what-the-hell about it.

1 comment:

  1. Your description of the wrapping of the pennant/pendant (someday I'll find out which is correct)underwater in the river sounds like a nightmare. I'm surprised the type of buoy where hollow pole comes up from top of round buoy with a line with a thimble coming out of pole (and staying out of the water)is not used down there. Sometimes called a Cuttyhunk mooring buoy as it is what they use in their mooring field. Lines never tangle as they are never in the water. Yours are more exciting though.

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