Taylor Made T3C 18-Inch Mooring Buoy, Shackle and Rope Nest

The Taylor Made T3C 18-inch mooring buoy is built for boaters who leave their boat swinging on a permanent mooring and want hardware they don't have to think about. You get 100 pounds of buoyancy in sea water, an 18-inch diameter body, and a shackle-and-rope-nest top that keeps your pennant organized instead of fighting itself. It's the kind of buoy you set once and check on at the start of each season, and then mostly forget about while it does its job out in the field.

What makes it hold up is the construction. The core is closed-cell foam, so even if the outer polyethylene shell takes a hit from a dock or a drifting dinghy, the buoy keeps floating. We've seen these stay in service for years after a shell crack because the foam doesn't waterlog the way an air-filled buoy does. There's no bladder to lose pressure, no valve to check, nothing to top off. The polyethylene shell also shrugs off barnacle growth better than a vinyl skin, though you'll still want to pressure-wash it once a year to keep it looking right and keep the growth from adding weight.

The 2-1/2 inch tube runs straight through the center of the buoy, and that tube-through design is the whole point. It lets you run a pennant up through the body and shackle off at the top, and when the pennant wears out you just pull it and feed a new one through. No cutting the buoy off the mooring, no wrestling it up onto the dock. The rope-nest shackle top also helps keep line twist down versus a plain eye, which matters when your boat is turning with the tide day after day, season after season.

Sizing is straightforward. The 100-pound lift suits single-point moorings for boats in the 30 to 35 foot range. If you're mooring something bigger, or you sit in a spot that runs 4 knots or more of current, you'll want to step up in size or add a second buoy. Undersize the float and it rides low in the water, which is hard on the reflective stripe and makes it hard to spot at first light. Get the size right and it sits proud, riding the chop instead of getting pulled under it.

About that stripe. The blue reflective band is there so you can pick your mooring out of a dark harbor with a spotlight, and it does the job at 50 yards or better when it's clean. Sun and soot dull it over a season, especially down in Florida, so a light buff and a wash each spring brings it back. White body, blue stripe, easy to find across a crowded field even when a dozen boats are swinging on their moorings around you.

A couple of rigging notes from people who run these hard. The center tube fits half-inch to 5/8-inch rope well, but add a thimble or a chafe guard where the line meets chain, because that contact point wears fast and it's the part you can't see from the surface. And when you shackle off, use a pin sized to the tube so the shackle doesn't chew the tube wall over time. Stainless hardware in brackish water can start to pit inside a couple of seasons, so give it a look when you do your spring check and swap anything that's showing rust.

So who's this for? Yacht clubs, mooring fields, private moorings, anyone who needs a dependable permanent float that a boat can hang off through a whole season. It isn't a pickup buoy or a fender, and it isn't meant for a temporary anchor setup. It's a mooring buoy, plain and simple, built to sit out there and do one job well.