Taylor Made 806621 21-Inch Net Buoy | Neon Yellow

The Taylor Made 806621 is one of those pieces of gear that just does its job. It's a big 21-inch round vinyl buoy in neon yellow, and it floats 200 pounds in salt water and 194 in fresh. A rope comes rigged to the single eye at the top, so you can put it to work the day it shows up. Boaters use these for marking a mooring, floating the corkline on a net, or holding a pickup line where you want something bright and hard to miss.

The color is the first thing you notice. That neon yellow reads from a long way off, which is exactly the point on a crowded mooring field or when you're flagging gear in open water. It's a lot easier to run back to a bright buoy than a faded one. One honest note from years of hard sun: the neon does soften toward a paler yellow after a couple of seasons of UV. If you want it to stay loud, a coat of vinyl dye each spring brings it right back.

Construction is heavy vinyl, the same tough skin Taylor Made uses across its buoy line. It shrugs off dock rash, sun, and salt better than a thin-wall float, and there's no hard shell to crack if it takes a knock against a piling. Keep it inflated to a firm, drum-tight feel and it'll hold its shape and its rated buoyancy.

Size matters here, so let's talk dimensions. It's 21 inches across, 27 inches tall, and 66 inches around. That's a genuinely large float. On a 22-footer it tucks under the swim platform fine, but on a low-freeboard inflatable it can bump the transom when you bring it aboard, so plan your storage. The buoyancy is the real story. With 200 pounds of saltwater lift, it'll hold a mooring pennant, a good length of chain, and still ride high enough to spot in chop.

Now the rope eye. It's a 1-1/2 inch inside diameter, which is plenty for a messenger line or a mooring pennant up to about half-inch or five-eighths. If you're running heavier three-quarter-inch and up, you'll want to shackle to the eye rather than reeving the big line straight through, both to save the line from chafe and to keep the eye from taking the full load on one point. A stainless shackle and a backing washer at the eye is cheap insurance if you're loading it near its rated pull.

The rope that ships with it is a three-strand line tied at the eye. It's fine to get you going. If this buoy is going to live on a permanent mooring, a lot of folks swap the working line for polyester, which holds up better at the splice over multiple seasons in the water. Think of the included rope as a starter, not a forever line.

A couple of real-world rigging tips. If you're mooring in current, the buoy alone can wander, so add a length of chain below it to keep everything sitting where you set it. Twenty pounds of chain makes a big difference in a two-knot tide. And if you're using it as a pickup buoy on a bigger sailboat, tie it to a light messenger and let the buoy do the finding, so you're not wrestling the whole rig by hand at the bow.

Who's this for? Anyone who needs a durable, high-visibility float they can trust. Mooring owners, net fishermen, dock and marina crews, and cruisers who want a proper pickup buoy. It's not a fender and it's not a tiny marker, it's a full-size working buoy built by a company that's been making marine flotation for a long time. Rig it right, give the eye some backing, and it'll ride out on the water season after season.