Irrspective of boat size anything less than 12mm diameter is liable to cut into your hands, Length needs to be not less than say 10m - 30feet - 5 fathoms - so it can reach up to lockside and back down.
For a permanent mooring you can make up ropes to suit the situation. You can leave those behind and carry nice ones with you. I am old school so I use 3 strand spun nylon as it is soft and dead easy to splice.
The cost of boating is insignificant compared to costs of a young wife and two teenage kids!
I usually go for 12mm double braid polyester as it's nice on the hands and has better abrasion resistance than nylon, about 1.5 times boat length for locks (unless you have a particularly deep one nearby), and have 2 on bow and one on each stern cleat all run back to cockpit for easy controlled mooring. Double braid can also be eye spliced fairly easily with the right fids. Try Barry at boatropes.co.uk
On our moorings we have separate mooring lines made up to the correct length and leave them attached to the mooring. We use different mooring ropes when cruising and this keeps the cruising ropes new and shiny.
It makes mooring dead easy when you come back you just drop the eyes over the cleats and your done.(extra time in pub).
We actually use small webbing lifting slings on the mooring. 1000kg breaking strain, they come in various lengths and I get them for nothing from work, but they are not expensive if you buy them from a lifting supply company.
Length,thickness of mooring rope.
Posted - 03 Feb 2015 : 11:48:54
