"Sailing" at mooring

The last few times I've been out in the harbour, there have been only two boats that weren't sailing around their moorings. One approx. 35' cutter had a tiny (~30 sf) riding sail on the backstay, the other was a big heavy 50+ foot steel thing with her masts unstepped. I'm told that the multihull folks will simply rig a bridle to their outer bows, but we only have a small handful of cats and tris here and they rarely moor out. For monos, the key seems to be to get surface area up and aft to push her back in line if she starts to veer off.

 

Use a second anchor set almost abeam and tightened slightly so the main anchor is about 10 or 15 degrees from windward. If on a permanent mooring, try switching to a bridle mooring and use a shorter pennant.

 

I made some covers for a 30 square metre once. The boat was a notorius mooring sailer without the covers, due to the super long bow overhang and the need for the mooring gear to come aboard some way back from the bow on a bridle.
We fitted all over covers to teh boat (bom tent with rear extension and a small triangular tent from mast to cover forehatch. The boat sailed really badly like that. We convinced the owner to get rid of the forward cover and closed the front of the boom tent off and the boat gained impeccable manners.
All about increasing the windage BEHIND the centre of lateral resistance to equal or be close to that in front of it.

Regards, Andrew.

 

Problem solved

Thank you to all that have replied. I've removed the roller furling jib and the dodger for the winter and this has made a considerable improvement. Reducing windage forward, even by a small amount in my case, seems to have made the difference. JJ