Cleaning mooring lines, an important operation.
The good boat owner never tires. Or rather, let’s put it this way: a boat owner always has something to do to fill idle time. This is because boats practically always need maintenance, without ever – or almost never – reaching the moment when one can say, with arms crossed: there, there’s really nothing left to do. Some improvements, some minor maintenance, in fact, are always possible. And doing them means sailing better, with greater safety; mooring more stably and more easily; and, of course, saving a lot, because a boat cared for in every aspect is a boat that requires few spare parts. Here at Marina Porto Antico in Genoa, we know this very well, seeing and helping daily the boat owners who have chosen us for mooring their boats come and go from the docks for various maintenance interventions. This is also why the choice of a berth, in Liguria as elsewhere, should be made considering this: the port, the marina, the dock, in short, the mooring, is something that is lived, a place where those who have a passion for the sea end up spending a lot of time. And it’s therefore worth choosing where the berths ensure all the necessary services, as well as comfort, safety, cleanliness, and a beautiful landscape. And certainly from all these points of view, it’s really difficult to find better than our tourist marina in Genoa.
And if we had to find an activity that many boat owners forget, when making the list of maintenance for their boat, we could propose precisely the cleaning of mooring lines.
Why It’s Important to Clean Mooring Lines
Why spend time cleaning mooring lines? Those who are not very familiar with good mooring management of a boat might think that the main factor is purely aesthetic. However, this is not the case. The cleaning of these often neglected mooring lines is primarily related to the safety of the mooring itself: a clean line is a cable that will last longer and resist better over time. Still thinking about safety, it should also be emphasized that a clean mooring line will be much, much less slippery than a dirty one, thus making operations easier and safer, without the risk of letting the cable slip. Moreover, it should not be forgotten that in certain cases – especially in certain particularly inhabited waters – organisms with sharp shells also settle on the lines, opening the possibility for small wounds that could become infected.
And finally, do we really want to compare the act of using – and pulling aboard or on the dock – dirty and muddy lines, versus the convenience of using clean lines? Here, these are all excellent reasons to clean mooring lines and mooring ropes at least once a year.
How to Clean Mooring Lines
Some suggest putting the lines directly in the washing machine. But by doing so, in many cases, one would solve – perhaps – one problem to create another: we would indeed have probably clean lines, at the expense of a washing machine to throw away. There are various more or less effective methods for cleaning mooring lines. In the Venetian lagoons, for example, to free the cables from dirt, they are rubbed against iron rods.
Here we propose another method. First of all, let’s check the lines. We might be dealing with mooring lines inhabited not only by algae, but also by barnacles, mussels, and whatnot. The advice in these cases is to start in advance, leaving – after a quick cleaning – the lines out of the water for two days, even better if in the sun: this way everything deposited on the line will dry out, making its removal easier, using for example a blunt knife (being careful not to damage the strands).
After this preliminary step, we can move on to the actual cleaning, to be done with fresh water, even better if with a pressure washer: we’ll pass the water jet over the entire mooring rope to eliminate any residue.
At that point, the mooring line should be clean and ready to be reused more comfortably and safely – without having threatened the life of our washing machine!
