The Great Loop 035 Mooring Ball Hijinks

in the last video we had made it all the way across the st lucie river with some crazy winds and we had found this place to spend the night i can't say it was the best night of sleep i've ever had on a boat and the very next morning it was time to head north back on the way early in the morning the sun was showing itself but it's pretty gloomy today we're approaching the indian river it was predicted that the winds that we had recently experienced were not going to lay down so there was no time to celebrate the fact that we had made it to the east coast we just pushed ahead into the wind past bridges and power lines looking for a safe place to park the boat we have made it to fort pierce where we're gonna stay for a couple of days there's a few marinas around here and up here there's a mooring field so it's blowing pretty hard we thought about dropping anchor somewhere but instead we're gonna spend a little money and get a mooring bowl and stay tied up here for a couple days mike and i are fond of just dropping anchor for free but in this wind a mooring ball would ensure that we don't drag anchor a much better option [Music] to the right of that uh catamaran yeah you got here to look at it to death and all for you although the wind was howling and this was the first time i was ever going to be picking up a mooring ball i knew the concept and i wasn't terribly intimidated especially since i had an extra hand on board we could anchor for free right up there if this comes with the amenities of the marina i guess it's worth it for a few days yep but you got to land there you know whatever i don't know yeah behind the cap seems easy enough they send them kind of close to each other right yeah they are they they don't have like a kind of room here looks like so the concept is you have a line tied off you pick up the mooring you slide the line through the hole and then you tie it off simple easy before long i realized something had to be wrong talk to me the surrounding water was very shallow and the wind was pretty strong and i wanted to get away from this wheel so falsely i started putting a little bit of blame on d'artagna i say falsely because it really wasn't his fault grab it man you call yourself and fishman doesn't have a loop on it at this point we shouldn't just float it away but don't tanya is persistent and that's a bit unfortunate because he amazingly did grab the mooring ball but from a part they probably shouldn't have no rope and the boat hook was now in the water yeah hold on hold on get on the back of the boat if you watch the winds you can see that it's coming left of ford and it seemed consistent enough that i risked going up alongside to see if we could reach over somehow and get that pole back probably wasn't the best idea because winds sometimes shift on the way here while retrieving mike's kayak which had busted free from his boat i had run over the painter line which pulls my dinghy so i was already in a foul mood hey try to make sure i don't run over that line again and sure enough the wind shifted pretty hard now coming from starboard and pushed me right up against the mooring ball and there was really nothing i could do except watch it slide towards the back where the propeller and the rudders were aggravated at least i knew not to put it in gear and really screwed things up i'm gonna run that over now what do i do i bet i'm gonna pivot right on it do you think my propeller is uh caught around that thing that's gonna be trouble i sat still and quiet knowing that sometimes doing nothing is the best thing [Music] um i don't dare do that if the propeller is around it dartania didn't seem like he was going to give up so it was time for me to intervene all right i'm tired of letting them suffer all right bubba what you got to do is you got to unhook this and walk it around to the starboard side of the boat you know what i mean just do it one at a time just do this one first my plan was to take the dinghy and try to attach it to the front of the boat and use it to pull the boat free from the mooring if it worked i had to be on board so titania had to be the guy to do it at first he was a little squirrely up there with the tiller handle in his hand but soon he got a hang of it and it looked like it might work awesome keep it keep it going all the way around you got 180 degrees to go [Music] you gonna handle it by yourself or come over i got 10 pulling me around pivoting me off of this thing hey i'm free go away let go i had told my first mate that should we break free that he should let go immediately he did it in this particular scenario both of us observed a rule that is very very important and that is not to panic nice you just wait for it and there it is all right we'll pick a different ball we're gonna come in behind you that mooring ball did not have a uh a loop on it yeah i felt like i was giving my buddy the full experience he was getting to see the working part of being on a boat check that one make sure it's not screwed up too along with the fun and the excitement here i just pulled up to the mooring ball like i normally would if i was by myself except he was there to help me out and we got the job done later on he had told me that he had a blast that's some cool um he thought it was cool there's good times tied up and i'm made up to the mooring ball fantastic although it is my first mooring ball i'm not going to take full uh blame for the screw up because that first one had a busted eyelet like han solo said it's not my fault oh i'm sure he looked very frazzled with the wind in the hair all right well i got to ride the water bowl yeah you did well my first experience at a mooring ball was memorable to say the least and actually pretty cool we spent quite a little while here wound up getting provisions and fuel we had all gone out to eat and then i said goodbye to tartanya and mike and i would then move on next stop vero beach and then north that would be the general direction for a long time now hope to see you guys along for the next part of this adventure

Channel: zoffinger

Views: 28,378

Keywords: kayak, kayak fishing, fishing, saltwater, Florida, fish, how-to, zoffinger, Tampa, ocean, snook, shark, greatloop

Id: boyxjYRPw8Q

Length: 11min 32sec (692 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 03 2021