Mooring ropes must be strong and high-quality
A boat’s mooring lines and ropes must be able to withstand many things. Mooring ropes must be high-quality, strong, highly UV resistant, and highly abrasion resistant. At Biltema you will find a range of mooring ropes and mooring lines that meet these criteria. Mooring ropes must also have some flexibility and elasticity to protect both the dock and the sailboat in rough weather when the boat is in port. You may want to supplement your mooring rope with a mooring spring.
Choose the right mooring line
When choosing a mooring rope for your boat, you may need to consider several factors, such as the size and weight of the boat, as well as the conditions at the dock and so on.
There is a good rule of thumb you can use when choosing a mooring rope for your boat: Choose a mooring rope with a tensile strength of at least 75% of the boat’s weight.
Biltema’s mooring rope
Biltema’s mooring lines and ropes are pre-packed and have fixed dimensions. Therefore, check the length and tensile strength of the various products on the page. All products have spliced eyelets with or without steel thimbles.
We know that safety is important on the water, but safety is also important at the dock. When mooring your boat, the equipment must be in good working condition, since it is necessary to have reliable moorings in sometimes stressful situations.
If a mooring line is damaged, it must be replaced immediately.
The breaking strength is not the most important thing when choosing a mooring line
When choosing the thickness of your mooring line, it is not uncommon for breaking strength to come into play. It is not actually the crime force that is the most important thing. A bollard or bollard on the boat rarely withstands loads of several tons, which a mooring line does. In other words, it is more often the boat that is damaged under high stress than the mooring line. Therefore, you should look to recommendations rather than pure breaking strength of the rope.
It is also the case that depending on how you moor your boat, the strength of the mooring line is also affected. If you pull the line from the boat, through a ring and back to the boat, you get a higher breaking point than if you have it simply moored.
Things to consider when choosing the right thickness of mooring line:
- Based on the boat's weight
- If you have very short dampers, use an external shock absorber
- How you moor the boat affects the breaking strength of your mooring line
Eternal shock absorber or integrated?
Shock absorbers on a mooring line are used to absorb the movement caused by waves, wind, and other boats. It helps the rope to rock and not jerk hard.
With an integrated shock absorber in the rope, no extra mooring springs or rubber snubbers are needed.
A rope that does not have built-in shock absorption must be supplemented with rubber or metal mooring snubbers, for example.
Note that shackles, hooks, and any metal parts used together with mooring lines constitute a weakening factor, in most cases. Ropes generally have a higher tensile strength than metal parts.
Help with mooring
Below we have shown how to ensure good mooring of your boat in different conditions on the boat bridge . Mooring alongside the bridge, mooring at Y booms, mooring to a boom and mooring at a boat berth with two aft posts.
Mooring line FAQs
How thick should the mooring line be?
Synthetic ropes with a dimension of 8-24 mm are recommended for recreational boats.
