Mooring Area and Mooring Buoys Plan

Developing tourism and growing number of tourist and other smaller vessels and personal boats require a larger number of berths, outside dedicated ports, and harbours. Vessels can always anchor, but for ecological, and commercial reasons mooring areas with installed mooring buoys are better and more efficient solutions. However, choosing mooring areas, their size, number of buoys, etc. compared to choosing anchorage areas, is a much more complicated procedure, even more so for not having a unified form nor practice. This paper analyses some of the main issues in the selection of mooring sites and fields, focusing on the factors that should be considered in the planning process. As a result of the carried-out analysis some basic recommendations will be given concerning the choice of mooring field shape, swing radius calculation, distance from the shore, nearby vessels, and other obstacles.