Toerail Cleats

[ilader]

Toerail Cleats - pro & con.
I have no experience with toerail-mounted mooring cleats, with no chock, but I've seen them. I have lots of experience with deck-mounted cleats. The line chafes at the chock, so you need chafing gear. Sheets, sails and toes catch on the horns. So: should we all move our cleats out to the rail? Why aren't they there already?

[Ian McColgin]

I do not favor cleats on the toe rails.

After wind storms, I've seen three sorts of failure that led to moored boats on the beach:

Cleat torn loose due to side loading as the boat tacked at her mooring;

Eye of the splice chafed through, apparantly due to the chafed induced by the motion of the eye sawing away at the cleat, again due to the boat's tacking in the wind; and

Damage to the unprotected pendent chafing against the bow of the boat.

One boat had two of these causes as it was bridled to both sides and it appears that one side chafed under the bow and then when the other cleat was side-loaded it tore the toerail and hull/deck attachment free.

A proper cleat for the heavy duty of a mooring should have a clean pull along the axis of the cleat to bring the strength of the fastenings most fully into play. Put the cleat on the toe rail and you can't even put in a proper through-bolt and backing and on the rail you have a serious lack of structure on one side.

The mooring pendent's straight and fair lead is assured by a proper, not a toy, chock. With a fair lead, the chafe problems on the eye of the pendent just won't happen.

Properly laid out cleats don't catch toes or sheets. If that's the problem, rerig. Have proper chocks. Use chafe guard.

G'luck