We spent the last few days on a mooring ball with our Westsail 32 for the first time. We tried a few mooring pendant setups, but we were never satisfied. I'm curious how and where other Westsail owners hook up the mooring pendant to the boat. Also, do you use a secondary line? If so, where and how do you attach it to your boat? Thanks in advance.

If you will be moored for a long time, a second line is needed for redundancy.

I use two lines and run them to the forward hawse pipes.  Balance the tension on the two.  I never have problems with the mooring lines touching the bobstay.

If you still have problems with the bobstay, leave the backup line slack and the primary line running through the hawse pipe.  Instead of riding straight into the wind, you'll ride 30 degrees off the wind, swinging in the wind will be less, and the mooring line will never touch the bobstay.  I do the same with my snubber line when anchored.  In choppy seas at anchor, 30 degrees off the wind is more comfortable than zero degrees.

if there is an eye on the pendant, do not run lines from port-to eye=to-starboard.  Run one line from port-to eye- back to port and ditto for the other side for the second line.  You don't want the lines sawing back and forth through the eye.

Most secure, is to use a cow hitch on the eye, running both tails back up to the boat.  That assures zero chafing at the point of contact with the eye.

Of course some mooring pendants have no eye on the end so you connect the pendant directly to the boat via the hawse pipe.  You still need a second line for backup.   Chafing is the number one cause of mooring failures so pay attention to how you connect that second line to the mooring.

Tom, I'm sorry to disagree but a snatch block is not secure enough for heavy weather.

Dick, I agree with your observation that the snatch block is inadequate in choppy seas.  It's just handy for a short anchoring or mooring.   I have only moored in sheltered coves or a river and for anything more serious, or longer than a single night, I'd opt for double lines through the hawse pipes.  When I crewed for Don Lacoste on HERON a few years back we used the mooring pendant through the stbd hawse and the port anchor rode (unshackled from the chain, of course) through the port hawse.  It created a nice bridle well clear of the bobstay but I think we lay bows-on.

In Chesapeake Bay I made the error of anchoring for the night in a more exposed location in about 9-10 feet of water.  A severe storm rolled through VA that night and created long, deep swells that rolled down the bay.  It was like riding a bucking bronco for four hours and we actually bottomed a few times in the troughs.  We didn't drag, but it was an ugly night and if I had had the rode run through a snatch block back then I'm sure it would have caused damage.  - Tom 

Michael, I'm always ready to learn.  The term "cransiron" is a new one for me.  It that the technical term for the bowsprit cap band with the flanges on all four sides for the stays and tangs?  Just studying the setup with the block fitted at the end of the bowsprit it struck me that in a heavy chop or long rollers, such as I experienced on Chesapeake Bay, the horsing of the boat would put a heavy strain on the block unless a lot of rode was deployed.  Thinking more about it, maybe it's more like balancing the boat motion when riding to a para-anchor, i.e. keeping the boat and the mooring ball on the same wave period.  I would suppose that when riding at anchor I could just deploy more like 10:1 to dampen any shock loads.  Or am I thinking right, or am I just totally full of crap?  -Tom

LOL. I remember that someone said that if you want to start a lively never-ending debate among sailors, just raise the topic of ground tackle.  It appears that he was right.

Lost in the debate about where to attach is my point about riding at an angle off the wind. IMHO it is noticeably more comfortable.