Extract from:
Version: Final Issued: 30/06/2014
Profile of the Mooring Barge and Crew
used for Inspection, Maintenance and Installation
(Authorised Mooring Contractor)
Overview
The Warneet North Boat Club (WNBC) has been authorised by Parks Victoria (Parks Vic) as a Mooring Contractor for a number of years. The club uses a mooring barge manned by a crew drawn from club membership to execute its responsibilities for the Installation, Inspection and Maintenance of moorings used by club members. This document provides a summary profile of the equipment, people and operations used in this endeavour.
Barge Construction
The current mooring barge has been custom designed and built as a purpose-specific vessel based on the experience that club had with earlier maintenance vessels. It is powered by an outboard motor. Refer to Figs 1 and 2.
Fig 1 - Mooring Barge (quarter bow)
Fig 2 - Mooring Barge (side)
It has a flat working deck some 6 metres long and 2.4 metres wide attached to two pontoons underneath. The pontoons are of aluminium construction, fully-enclosed, compartmented and running the full length of the barge. Their size and positioning were chosen to provide excellent buoyancy and stability. Even when fully loaded, it has a shallow draft in-transit and retains good free-board when under load.
A steel frame connects the pontoons and houses an 18mm marine ply deck. Mooring access is provided across the bow and through a centrally located cut-out between the pontoons.
Barge Fitout
Secured to the frame is a mounting bracket for an outboard, a hand winch, an A-frame, storage boxes and guard rails for the crew (refer Figs 3 and 4).
Key pieces of lifting equipment fitted to the barge are:
· a hand-operated crank for minor operations over the bow; and
· an overhead electric winch for more substantial operations through the centre cut-out.
Electric equipment on-board is powered from deep-cycle batteries. Supplementary power can also be drawn from an on-board generator.
Fig 3 - Open Deck space
Fig 4 - Storage and Guard Rails
Ancillary equipment includes:
· a backup generator;
· a grinder for cutting used chain, shackles and swivels;
· a power washer for removing marine growth from a mooring before inspection and for cleaning the deck; and
· miscellaneous hand equipment (shifters, wrenches, pliers, wire cutters, restraining bars, blocks, hooks, chains etc).
Crewing
The WNBC has a relatively stable membership of around 50 members. A crew of 3, occasionally 4, is drawn from the members. Most have a background in heavy industry or the trades and deal daily with various specifications and standards. Building, plumbing, electrical, boiler making, welding, concreting and heavy engineering skills are available to the club via the members. Apart from all having a recreational marine license, additional on-water skills come from many members having spent (and continuing to spend) their working-lives in marine vocations.
Certification
Mooring Tackle Maintenance activity is undertaken by the members under the supervision of the more experienced personnel. Those members not able or willing to do such work are free to engage external Authorised Mooring Contractors to do the maintenance and certification work for them.
Mooring Tackle Certification is undertaken by a small number of members with intimate knowledge of the tackle requirements and appropriate skills and experience in dealing with such material.
Operations
The club members hold approximately 40 moorings between them. Not all are inspected by the club. Because of the recent re-engineering of the moorings south of the Warneet South Jetty, the only ones remaining pertinent to club inspection activity are all north of this jetty.
Many of these are ‘mud-moorings’. At low tide, the moorings are exposed and maintenance on them can be performed on foot. Because the area in front of the club is so protected from the weather and because it drains so significantly on the ebb tide, mooring tackle inspection and maintenance without reliance on the mooring barge is possible. Other moorings have some residual water cover across all tides and need to be serviced by the mooring barge.
The mooring barge is only used during day-light hours and is secured over-night. When not in use, the barge is stored in the yard on a custom cradle made for it. Launch and retrieval of the barge uses the club’s slipway facilities.
On-water maintenance and inspection activity for minor work is performed over the bow (refer Fig 5). The hand crank has been located towards the stern to allow mooring chain to be laid out along the length of the barge for cleaning, inspection and maintenance.
Fig 5 - Over-the-bow lift
Installation and more substantial on-water maintenance and inspection activity is performed through the central cut-out in the middle of the deck (refer Figs 6 and 7). All work involving a ground-weight and usually the bottom chain is undertaken centrally because of the weight of the tackle involved.
Fig 6 - Overhead Electric Winch
Fig 7 - Through-deck access
When the mooring barge is used, it is common practice for the crew to tow a ‘tinny runabout’ behind it. Apart from being a safety precaution for the crew, the tinny allows additional mooring tackle to be quickly fetched from shore when, for example, replacement fittings carried on-board have all been used on the moorings maintained earlier in the day.
Administration
Vessel Registration
The mooring barge is registered in the club’s name with VicRoads:
Registration Number: NG617
Annual renewal date: 9th December
Reporting to Parks Vic
As an incorporated association, the WNBC must maintain an accurate register of its members and their associated detail. Data included in the register covers the boats owned by the members and their attributes (registration number, type, length, beam, draft, weight etc) and the moorings used to hold them (registration number, type, construction, GPS location etc).
The club has developed an application, replicating the proforma originally provided by Parks Vic, to expedite the preparation of Mooring Reports. Inspection data is captured and matched with other boat and mooring data from the register. The reports are electronically provided to Parks Vic and can be machine-stored and printed ensuring their continued legibility.
Data contained in the Mooring Reports is synchronised with the master copy of the member register using version control at the bottom right of the report. This supports consistency, accuracy and backup of the information supplied to Parks Vic.