Consideration of the principles in 1.4 lead to the following mooring guidelines and these assume that the moored ship maybe exposed to strong winds or current from any direction.

• Mooring lines should be arranged as symmetrically as possible about the midship point of the ship.
• Breast lines should be oriented as perpendicular as possible to the longitudinal center line of the ship and as far aft and forward as possible.
• Spring lines should be oriented as parallel as possible to the longitudinal center line of the ship

Head and stern lines are normally not efficient in restraining a ship in its berth. Mooring facilities with good breast and spring lines allow a ship to be moored most efficiently, virtually with in its own length. The use of head and stern lines requires two additional mooring dolphins and decreases the overall restraining efficiency of a mooring pattern when the number of available lines is limited. This is due to their long length and consequently higher elasticity and poor orientation. They should only be used where required for maneuvering purposes or where necessitated by local pier geometry, surge forces or weather condition.

• The vertical angle of the mooring lines should be kept to a minimum.

The fatter the mooring the mooring angle the more efficient the line will be in resisting horizontally applied loads applied on the ship.

• Mooring lines of the same size and type should be used for all leads. If this is not possible due to the available equipment, all lines in the same service breast lines , spring lines, head lines should be same size and type.

First lines ashore can be synthetic lines even though the main mooring lines are wire. This is acceptable as long as it is realized that he fiber lines will not add to he final restraining capacity of the system unless all lines in that group are of the same material.

• If tails are used on the wires at the same type and size of tail should be used on all lines run out in the same service

Synthetic tails are often used on the ends of wire lines to permit easier handling and to increase line elasticity.

• Mooring lines should be arranged so that all lines in the same service are about the same length between the ships winch and he shore bollard. Line elasticity varies directly with line length and shorter lines will assume more load.