Lanta Marine Services is pleased to announce that the first phase of the moorings project has now been successfully completed.

We started by building an ‘A’ frame pontoon for placing the moorings. This is a very robust pontoon made from wood and steel, and for the floatation we have used 6 x 200lt heavy plastic barrels. The whole lot is bolted, nailed, epoxied, and tied together.

We plan to replace this with a larger, multi-purpose pontoon later which will act as a work dock to be taken along side boats needing repairs etc.(more on this later) The steel ‘A’ frame will then be attachable to this new pontoon and, having more floatation, this will enable us to pull the mooring blocks up for annual inspection.

The mooring blocks are made from steel reinforced concrete and weigh in at a hefty 600kgs! The eye is 1 inch steel which is interwoven with the 12mm re-bar in the block. To this block we have attached 10m of 1/2 inch, close linked chain, an over-sized swivel, and another 10m of 1 inch warp. This gives an overall 4:1 at MHWS.

We had the blocks delivered to the beach 2km south of the town, as this offered a firm base for the delivery truck to drive on, and was also the place where we had built the pontoon. The rest of the tackle was added and, on a rising tide, we floated the pontoon over the blocks, secured them, and let the tide do the work of lifting them. Once afloat, we towed the pontoon to the moorings area and the blocks were released without any problems.

Over the weeks that have passed since then we’ve been checking the moorings as they sank. They’re now about 1.5m below the mud, we’ve had 30kt+ gusts and consistent 20kt winds and, not surprisingly with 600kgs and sticky mud, nothing has moved.

Given the protection from extreme weather that the moorings area provides, our daily checks on the boats, and our annual checks on the moorings, we are very confident that LMS can boast the most secure moorings in the region.

LMS moorings and services really do offer you ‘true peace of mind’ while you are away from your boat.