As The Mooring Ball Turns...

 So, too, are the days of our lives.  Mixed soap operas are like mixed metaphors.  There - wise words from Fiji.

So Jose (pronounced Yoh-say; she's Dutch) called me up and asked if I would ferry a diver around to check on moorings since I seem to have the only functional dinghy with a motor.  (!)  I said, "Sure."  So I hung around all day Saturday waiting for the call only to find out that he was actually coming Sunday.  Ok, whatever.  Saturday was a nice pleasant day with light overcast and no wind.  Sunday was rainy and hell-bent on blowing me off the water.

Anyway, I picked up Colin and his dive gear and ferried him out to Jose's boat.  I tried to impress him with my acumen about diving that I picked up by osmosis from Bill's boat.  He didn't seem to believe me.  Then I had to zip up his wet suit for him.  "Grab the tether, it's about ten inches long - attached to the zip." Sorry, there ain't no tether there, pal.  This ain't my first rodeo with dive suits and believe me when I say - it ain't there.  Grumble, grumble.  And we got on fine after that.

So he moorings here are hand-made from 4-5 ft lengths of one-inch steel rod with the 'screw' threads welded to them.  Each mooring consists of three of these screws, set about six feet from each other.  A bunch of divers actually go down and with a loooooooooong bar, secure the screw in the ground by walking in a circle on the bottom.  Then from each of these screws a stout poly line goes to a swivel.  Up from the swivel come two poly lines to the floats.  This is the theory.

The first mooring (Jose and Jeff's) was fine re hardware.  Unfortunately, someone had the bright idea to seize the shackles with cable ties.  Plastic cable ties.  Degradable plastic cable ties.  And all but one of the seizing ties were gone.  (Seizing is where you pass a wire through a hole in the shackle pin to prevent it from unscrewing and letting go.  Quite important.)  So Colin had to put new stainless seizing wire in all the many shackles that make up a mooring.  Luckily I was able to board Jeff and Jose's boat and kibbutz with them while he was laboring away on the bottom.

The other moorings that he checked were in various stages of sketchiness.  He's coming back after Christmas to do my end of the mooring field.

BUT, the guy on the boat next to mine had dive gear and a little air in reserve so he went down to check his mooring on his own.  He found that he had no swivel and the two lines from the surface went directly to the eyes at the top of the screws - all two of them.  The third screw was nowhere to be found.  To make matters worse, without the swivel, his lines had wrapped and chafed over the years to the point where they were almost worn through!  Now he's worried big time about the next big blow to come through.

And why doesn't the marina fix these moorings?  Ah, you knew I'd get to the soap opera at some point, right?  So some guy bought the land and put up a shack.  Some cruisers said "Hey, why don't you have moorings and we'll pay to rent them.  The owner said (in his best Sgt. Schultz) "I know nothing!  Noooooothing!"  So the cruisers design and install a bunch of moorings and give him the bill.  Then they pay monthly.  All is fine in Happy Valley until - the guy dies.  Now there is not even an owner of the marina on premises.  But wait1  Like a twist from the depraved mind of a soap opera writer, the owner had a silent partner!  Who still knows nothing about boats, or moorings.  He does know how to cash a check, however.  So silent partner hires a nice lady to receive said checks on a regular basis.  She, however, knows nothing about boats either.  Or moorings.  

Meanwhile, out on the water, there are several abandoned boats.  "Oh, yeah, that was Curly's boat.  He died."  Several that are vacant with owners presumably coming back for them - sometime.  And about a half-dozed occupied sailboats with very nervous occupants who wonder if the mooring next to them will let go causing sailboat pachinko down the creek.

Stay tuned next week for another episode of  'As The Mooring Ball Turns'.  Brought to you by Ovaltine.  Drink Ovaltine for health.