We approached a harbour two days ago, and my wife wanted to make a stop there. We were circling a bit, searching for a free space ... my wife suggested to stay on the inside of the breakwater, behind two motor boats, but I considered the space to be too short for our boat. Eventually someone suggested moving the last boat a bit closer to the first boat so it would be enough space for us, and it was promptly fixed while we were circling around.
We had pretty strong side wind there, it was very difficult to get the boat close enough to the breakwater; I think eventually six persons helped us out - and after they left, we still spent plenty of time adjusting ropes. Unfortunately I took no pictures after our arrival - during the evening the two motorboats left, and the morning after it was perfectly quiet. As you can see from the picture, boat was held in place mostly by three long breast lines with plenty of dampening (and, of course, we had some spring lines as well). I was a bit bewildered that the neighbour apparently managed with only some short breast lines and no springs , but considered that it probably worked out fine as the boat was much smaller. If the boat owner was OK with such a mooring, let it be ... I didn't even consider the possibility that it wasn't the boat owner itself that moved the boat, I thought he was among the people helping us with the mooring. I was too busy with the ropework to notice where everyone went when they were done helping us.
Later in the evening, the owner of the motor boat that had been moved came knocking on our boat. He was very angry. He said it was perfectly OK that we moved his boat, but very bad boatmanship to not fix the mooring ropes properly. He had spent quite some time mooring up properly before the boat got moved, and he could clearly see that our boat was pretty well moored up, so he was wondering why we didn't spend more efforts on his boat.
Some years ago there was a discussion on a Norwegian boating forum on weather it was OK to move another boat without the explicit permission of the owner. Quite many in the discussion thought it was never OK to do such a thing. What do you think?
