cuinbersome procedure, and all hands felt that the possibility of twists 

 in the mooring line, after the mooring line has been placed in the water, 

 would be minimized. Furthermore, wrapping the line around the buoy in a 

 neat fashion at the end of use will require equipment to rotate the 

 buoy slowly. It was, therefore, felt that a recommended method of storing 

 all lines to prevent entanglement will be to coil them with reverse 

 twists put in the lines as they are coiled, or fake them in a figure 

 eight configuration. This recommendation is in disagreement with the 

 findings of reference 8. 



For deployment, the anchor, thy crown buoy, and the crown line were 

 dropped into the water from the bow at a predetermined location. 

 The location of the anchor was estimated from the desired location of the 

 boom and the lengths of the mooring lines. The mooring line was then 

 payed out as the UTB slowly backed away from the anchor location. The 

 length of the properly weighed mooring line should normally be about 

 six times the depth of water to ensure that the weight of the mooring 

 line can maintain a zero degree angle with the horizontal at the 

 anchor. The procedures for design of the mooring line is given in 

 detail in a NAVFAC design manual, reference 10. For CEL testing, 

 however, no attempt was made to change the length of the lines to 

 confojrm to the above guidelines, to enable the mooring systems to be 

 further tested at other Navy bases after the completion of this test 

 program. 



As soon as the end of the mooring line was reached, the buoy was 

 dropped into the water. The free end of the buoy was already carrying the 

 mooring line to connect the buoy to the boom, which was attached to it 

 through a shackle. To connect the mooring line to the selected boom 

 connector, it was necessary to drill a hole into the bottom end of 

 the connector. Of course, this hole was drilled prior to deployment of 

 the boom from the pier. The size of the hole was determined from the 

 size of the eyebolt required for the shackle. The eyebolt and the 

 shackle sizes, of course, will depend upon the mooring system finally 

 selected by the Navy. 



The mooring lines used to connect the buoy to the boom were 

 3/4-inch diameter, polyester cover, polypropylene core, 2-in-l 

 stable braid, with a thimble at one end. The entire deployment of 

 the mooring system required three people in the UTB: one to operate 

 the engine, one to ensure that the lines were not entangled when paying 

 out , and the third to hold the line going into the water over the 

 bow. Because the purpose of the mooring line between the buoy and the 

 boom is to minimize drift of the boom from the desired position, 

 particularly in rough weather, the length of this line should be as 

 short as possible. An estimated 10 to 15 feet of mooring line to connect 

 the buoy to the boom appears to be adequate. 



Retrieval of the Mooring System using a Utility Boat 



The small mooring system was retrieved using the UTB by first 

 maneuvering the UTB so that the operator could bend over the side of the 



26 



