Apparatus for mooring vessels side-by-side

Abstract

An apparatus as described for mooring to floating vessels (10, 12) side-by-side. The first vessel (10) is moored to the seabed by a single point mooring system (14). The apparatus comprises an arm (20) with proximal and distal ends. The arm (20) is mountable on the first vessel (10) for rotation about a vertical axis and the distal end projects outwardly from the first vessel (10) in use. A substantially inelastic mooring line (24) is attached to the distal end of the arm (20) and is securable to the second vessel (12). The resilient means (26, 28) is operable to allow limited rotation of the arm (20) about the axis in the first direction in response to tension in the mooring line (24) which exceeds a pre-determined value. The resilient means automatically restores the arm (20) to its former position upon reduction of the tension below the predetermined value. The arm (20) is freely rotatable about the axis in a second direction opposite to the first direction.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.