Seamanship in small harbours

On exposed coasts, wave action in harbours can be surprisingly violent. Ken Endean examines mooring tactics.

- Ken Endean

Safe in harbour’ is a comforting phrase but can be dangerously misleading. In 50 years of mooring and anchoring yachts in all kinds of places, the only times when I have been seriously worried about risk of damage have been while tethered to harbour walls or well-secured pontoons.

Those objects are harder and stronger than a typical hull, so in any impact from a boat, the boat is likely to come off worse. Also, wave action within harbours is often quite violent. Despite the best efforts of engineers and builders throughout the ages, there are many small ports where a vigorous sea state outside means that a yacht will not be safe inside unless her crew adopt elaborate mooring precautions. Sometimes, staying at sea may be the only sensible option.

Yacht owners who do most of their sailing between sheltered estuaries, such as in SW or SE England,much of Brittany and even SW Ireland, may encounter nasty surprises if they venture into cruising grounds where protective headlands are few and moorings are only sheltered by man-made walls. I certainly adjust my own thinking when planning passages beyond the Lizard or up the East Coast.

Mullion (or Porth Mellin), in Mount’s Bay, is good example of a bad harbour: a tiny basin among steep-to cliffs, with no protection from the west and notorious for rapidly-deteriorating conditions. The chaos seen above between the quays was caused by a fairly modest swell – nothing exceptional for West Cornwall.