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RATs Week One: Mooring lines

Lucas de Boer, Year 10 student

Last week Friday, with my fellow BWIC RATs  (British West Indies Collegiate Reef Action Team) comrades, we headed down to Blue Haven Marina to try our hands at knotting the braids needed on either end of a mooring line. Before we started, we were given a 10 minute introduction about the different components which go into the mooring: the large helix anchor – needed to keep the finished mooring line safely in place, and the swivel mount to allow a vessel to freely rotate without gyrating the anchor out of the sand.

After a short braiding tutorial from our instructor Don, we set off into four teams, in a race to see who could finish the loop and braid first… The battle was long – and almost hopeless! (but finding out that our efforts might end up being used as mooring lines around our island made us more determined to succeed in our challenge!). By the end of about 30-40 minutes of struggling – and a lot of pestering of our instructors for help – most of us were finished and content (with the exclusion of me as I never really finished … even though I was given the title of “The experienced one”!).

Fun fact: Once our finished lines are installed, the white nylon rope (shown in the pictures ) is able to stretch an additional 30% to accommodate for a vessel’s vertical and horizontal movement in the water.

I and all of my comrades would like to thank Don from the Turks and Caicos Reef Fund, Roger from Big Blue, Jackie from Amanyara and Ms. Rankin from British West Indies Collegiate for the use of their time in order to give us a fun experience.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_media_grid element_width=”12″ grid_id=”vc_gid:1510090435008-73da2d4be6fa38096953bf04287ffdc8-7″ include=”1334,1335,1336,1337,1338″][/vc_column][/vc_row]