Mooring Tricks To Keep The Gulls Away

[Fishtales]

Thought I'd start a thread on this topic as I'm putting a mooring in Boston Harbor but will still have the slip on the South Shore.
If the mooring experiment goes well, I may do it 100% as the cost savings are quite large. I'll have access via a yacht club but want to mitigate the bird bombing.

So far I have come come up with the following:
- Use a couple of spiders on the hard top and maybe cabin roof and rear fishbox lid.
- Use pink pendant flags on a line and put these between bow and stern.
- Paint top of hardtop pink (really don't want to do this, but people swear the gulls don't like pink). Only will consider if I go mooring 100%.
- Keep boat spotless and free of anything birds think is food.

If you have ideas, I'm all ears.

tx

 

[SkunkBoat]

Don't catch fish. They know who catches fish.

Paint big eyeballs on your hardtop.

There is a guy at my marina with every contraption ever made.
His scrub brush seems to work better than anything....

 

[Byram]

Im sure you have checked the original Bird B Gone options. My chris craft is on a mooring and I use the 36 repeller on the salon roof and a large spider on the fly bridge cover. 2 other ideas i have seen are an owl decoy and running a thin line from your hardtop to the deck and hanging a few CD's from it. When the turn and flash in the breeze it scares the birds.(have not tried)

 

[DennisG01]

15 years ago I nailed those two little sticks onto the top of the header and tied a piece of scrap string between them. Haven't had a bird since. The neighbors, though... always seem to have a nice-sized splotch of white paint directly under their header. I've often thought of fashioning something similar on my hardtop.

 

[Halfhitch]

15 years ago I nailed those two little sticks onto the top of the header and tied a piece of scrap string between them. Haven't had a bird since. The neighbors, though... always seem to have a nice-sized splotch of white paint directly under their header. I've often thought of fashioning something similar on my hardtop.

I hope that's not a recent picture???? Brrrr....

 

[DennisG01]

I hope that's not a recent picture???? Brrrr....

Ha!

No, that was early Decemeber a few years ago. Mid coast Maine. It was just the first pic I could find with the header in view. BUT... it was AWFUL darn peaceful!!!!

 

[PointedRose]

Get a large net from an army navy store. Cut to shape of your boat. Use bungees to put the net over the boat on the mooring. Roll away and stow when in use. Gulls won’t like the net flapping around their feet in the wind and will find a neighbor

 

[Halfhitch]

Get a large net from an army navy store. Cut to shape of your boat. Use bungees to put the net over the boat on the mooring. Roll away and stow when in use. Gulls won’t like the net flapping around their feet in the wind and will find a neighbor

A friend did this same thing only he used a piece of an old gill net and tied strips of tin foil looking strips of flimsy plastic that fluttered in the wind. It was long enough to drape the whole boat and he put dowels from Home Depot in the rod holders and tied the net up high so stuff would flutter. He would stuff it in a plastic crate when he was on the boat. It worked pretty good but was so terribly ugly that the Dock Master got so many complaints, he had to get rid of it.

 

[nuclear]

I don't use anything at my mooring and just pray that other boats are a better target. Thus far I've been pretty lucky and only get like one or two poops per season.

(I realize I am jinxing myself now)

 

[HMBJack]

For years, what has worked well for me is to put a sand bag "spider" on the hood of each Yamaha. I recently had one get blown off in the the wind so now I put down a small piece of that non skid (waffle looking) shelf liner stuff under the sand bag base.

For the hard top - I simply use 20# test mono wrapped and tied between my antennas and outrigger bases. Best to have it about 12-18" above the hard top. The birds can see it (and avoid it) but hardly noticeable to me. Fishing line works really well for me in my harbor.

 

[seasick]

Owl statues work for about 15 minutes.
Strings and lines stretched between post are cruel and inhumane IMO.
Whirligig's can work well but they can't be too small bigger is usually better.

At my club we had an interesting bird event last fall . Gulls like to drop clams onto hard surfaces to break them open and some boats can get hit either intentionally or in error ( I didn't ask the gulls). So a gull drops a clam from up high and it goes right through a Marlin windshield side panel. oy.

 

[billyttpd]

I have noticed a few guys put a road cone on the hardtop.

 

[Mustang65fbk]

I think just about anything will be wishful thinking at this point. Having had my boats and family boats moored out on buoys for decades, I've not seen anything last long term. The owl statue will work for a little bit, so will the spider wires, or whatever they're called and even a neighbor had some funky looking metal bar that will rotate around with the wind. I have a picture somewhere of his boat with the owl on the back and a seagull sitting right next to it. They're all pretty smart birds and realize fairly quickly what is a threat and what isn't.

 

[Chessie246G]

Years ago I had a motion sensor activated water sprinkler. Worked pretty well for the garden both bords and critters. I wonder if it would work if set up on the dock?? MIGHT be worth looking into.

something like this....

Orbit Yard Enforcer Motion Activated Pest Deterrent Sprinkler Decoy 62100Z - The Home Depot

The Orbit Yard Enforcer Motion-activated Sprinkler protects landscapes and gardens from animals and pests. A powerful combination of spray, motion and noise not only acts as a deterrent to scare off animals,

www.homedepot.com

 

[SkunkBoat]

Years ago I had a motion sensor activated water sprinkler. Worked pretty well for the garden both bords and critters. I wonder if it would work if set up on the dock?? MIGHT be worth looking into.

Hey you kids! Get off my lawn!

 

[JJF]