We made a bridle for the mooring system!

As you know, we just spent a month on a mooring ball in Avalon Harbor, California.  These moorings are pretty close together, so they have a unique system of mooring both bow and stern, so the boats don’t swing in the wind.  Our 2006 SeaRay 340 has bow cleats on port and starboard, and stern cleats port and starboard.  We had a problem, though, when we tied up to the mooring lines. Because our cleats are off center and not in the middle of the bow, when we tied up to port our boat was too close to the boat on our starboard side.  So we devised a bridle system to effectively “move” the bow mooring to the center of the boat.  I simply secured the bridle to the starboard bow cleat, ran it outside the stanchions and under the anchor.  I then ran the line through the eye of the mooring line, and secured our bridle to the port bow cleat.  This allowed the bow mooring line to align in the middle of the boat, rather than offset to one side or the other.  I have attached a few photos for you to see.

Note:  We used a red line for this to differentiate it from our other, black dock lines.  Makes it easier to find it when you are digging for the lines! (The extra white line you see in the photo is the lead line for the stern mooring, and has no effect here.)

Here you see the completed bridle.  The mooring line is the yellow line.

Here is an overview of the bow port and starboard cleats with the bridle installed.