Armond Perretta wrote:
Lauri Tarkkonen wrote:

I do not understand this, here in Europe we have a multitude of gadgets
that help you to pick the moorin and fasten the rope to the loop or eye.

In some cases you can leave the hook (the length can be anything from
about a feet to six feet so it is easy to remove it without bending
head down to the moorin buoy, or you can just thread the rope through the
eye and pull it back to your boat and have a double rope to the mooring
and when you leave you just pull the rope away.


Both your comment and Don's assume that an actual pennant is fitted to the
mooring ball. In the case I cited, the standard pennant had been removed,
and I found myself hanging off the bow of a 46 footer (about 2 meters off
the water), trying to thread my own line through the mooring ball ring in 25
to 30 knots of wind. Only later did I fully realize that due to our late
season arrival the mooring pennants had already been removed by the club
staff.

I freely admit that I am not very good at holding a 46 foot motorsailer into
a 25 knot wind using a boat pole attached to a mooring ball ring.


There are a variety of gadgets that deal with this. One form is a
snap hook that can grab the ring on the top (or even the chain, I
suppose). The hook is attached to a pole with a slider and pops off
as soon as you're hooked.

The other flavor is a cute little thing that's impossible to describe.
You first push and then pull - the result is that a light line is
fed though the eye and you can use it to pull a large line through.
West sells several versions of this - I have one that clips on my
utility pole.

Of course, both of these require that you can position the boat long
enough at the mooring for the person forward to do the work. This is
one more reason why I like our catamaran. The bow is 15 feet wide so
the entire crew can hang over and curse the person that removed the
pennant.