Vulcan anchor on Ranger Tug

I had a fellow email me about Vulcan anchors. He wanted to know if one would fit on the anchor roller on his new Ranger 27. He was in Sarasota and I'm in Miami. I was making a delivery to Pine Island and planning to spend the night in Punta Gorda. I offered to bring a couple of anchors over if he wanted to meet me in Punta Gorda. He wanted to put some time on his engine before heading out on the Great Loop so he came down to Fisherman's Village in PG.

We met this afternoon and played with the anchors. If my picture posts, that is a 15 Kg Vulcan going on his anchor roller. It didn't look right. I think it would have worked but I suggested that a Rocna might be a better fit. I wish I had thought to bring a Rocna along so we could have tried it as well.

The conclusion is that the Vulcan is designed to go through a pulpit, not hang off the bow on a roller.

He and his wife were really nice folks and I invited them to join us on the Trawler Forum.
Is anybody else in Punta Gorda this weekend?

Looks like it would launch and retrieve ok, just might wobble around a bit in a seaway, but only minimally, if drawn up tight to the retaining ring. Would handle a roll bar anchor well also, I agree.

Rocna stated that the Vulcan was expressly designed for slotted pulpits that cannot fit a rollbar Rocna properly. I've not seen a Ranger Tug with a Rocna but I have seen one with a Manson. It fit very nicely.

Wow. That's some excellent customer service.

You call it good service, I call it a good way to write off the gas expense of a little vacation. I'm on my way to see FF and deliver him a pump and switch. I'm no dummy.

HopCar said:

You call it good service, I call it a good way to write off the gas expense of a little vacation. I'm on my way to see FF and deliver him a pump and switch. I'm no dummy.

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I need a business like that!

Here's a 26 Nordic Tug w a Rocna on a big roller. Looks fine to me. Don't know if it's the anchor, the boat or the bow roller that makes it seem to be at home. I do like the way NT mounted the winch at an angle to get a better grip on the chain.

On these smaller boats (like mine) that don't have an extended pulpit the Claws fit really well. I get a 33lb Claw on my Willard w a bow roller that dosn't stick out far at all. The way I like it.

Eric-- The windlas wildcat looks lines up with the NT's pulpit to me. The windless may be offset to port to do this but that's pretty common with horizontal windlasses. Ours is like that.

Hi Marin,
I think you're talking about the lateral positioning of the gypsy to line up w the bow roller. Got it.
But I'm refering to the pitch attitude of the winch. Rotate it back (as in the photo of the NT) and the chain may stay on the gypsy for more degrees of the arc whereas the chain is engaged w the gypsy.

But the more I think about it .. it appears that it's a function of gravity. However the chain point of contact (as the rode is pulled in) moves fwd when the winch is rotated (pitched up) as w the NT. But it would release the same number of degrees sooner unless the back of the hole below below the gypsy where the chain goes moved fwd enough to come in contact w the chain. That would be noisy and cause lots of wear on the back of the hole. I'll look closer at the NT today as I'm going down there.

I thought it was clever design by NT but in fact it could be just the opposite. Perhaps they just thought it would look better that way (pitched up) and overlooked the probable fact that the chain should come down through the center of the hole in the bottom of the base flange. Seems to me an idler sheave should have been incorporated to keep the chain in the center of the hole. If you (on your boat) had a sheave under the one just fwd of the gypsy and a hole through the deck directly under the front of that sheave much much more chain to gypsy engagement would result. But it's no doubt a case of "if it works as is more engagement would serve no purpose.

Offset to port on winches is common eh? That's good for the gypsy but it makes the capstan drum even more useless for mating w the bow roller. Seems a vertical shaft winch would be far superior having perfect alignment w both the capstan and the gypsy (perfect assuming a little offset to port). What can you do w the capstan? Begs the question "why have one"? What do you do w yours? You could winch your lunch on a nice day from the galley up to the foredeck.

The installation manual for our Lofrans Tigres said that the chain wrap around the wildcat should be at least one quarter of the distance around the wildcat. While it's impossible to tell in my photo, ours is a little more then that.

We use the gypsy drum on the windlass to haul our anchor trip line when we use it. We feed the line through the port bow hawse which is not quite lined up with the gypsy drum but is close enough to work fine.

If we ever have occasion to shacke our stern anchor combination rode, which is sized to be the main rode for the boat, to our all-chain main rode we could haul that the same way and then transfer the chain rode when we got to it to the wildcat. Or we could haul the combination rode over the bow roller and back to the gypsy drum at an angle. I think that would work okay as we have pretty deep rollers on the pulpit. But we've not had occasion to try it to see if it would work.

But I think you'll find that almost every boat that has a horizontal windlass with a wildcat on one side and a gypsy drum on the other and uses an all-chain rode will have the windlass mounted to align the wildcat with the pulpit rollers. Pulling chain at an angle encourages the chain to jump the side of the wildcat. The Tigres installation instructions are pretty adamant about aligning the wildcat with the pulpit and rollers.

Marin said:

....
But I think you'll find that almost every boat that has a horizontal windlass with a wildcat on one side and a gypsy drum on the other and uses an all-chain rode will have the windlass mounted to align the wildcat with the pulpit rollers. Pulling chain at an angle encourages the chain to jump the side of the wildcat. The Tigres installation instructions are pretty adamant about aligning the wildcat with the pulpit and rollers.

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That's how the Coot is set up. Don't know why the bollard is also offset, however. Perhaps that made deck framing simpler? more efficient deck arrangement? ...?

Is the base for the Sampson post part of the base for the windlass? Hard to tell from the photo.

No, they are separate units.

Marin,
Switching from one rode to the other or anytime you go from chain to line you'd need to switch from bow roller to Hawse hole or the reverse but as often as you do it (I suspect not even once) it should be tolerable ..... except in heavy rain at night in 40 knots of wind. But doing it in inclement weather would not be fun. And that's when the need would probably arise.

Since you have a pulpit you could put a vertical idler sheave at the halfway point or so and another just ahead of the drum. Then all could be hauled over the bow roller.

Since this thread is about the tractor seat anchor has anyone used one?

manyboats said:

Since you have a pulpit you could put a vertical idler sheave at the halfway point or so and another just ahead of the drum. Then all could be hauled over the bow roller. ?

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That would work great if the idler sheaves were mounted in such a way as to be able to take a potentially heavy load while remaining out of the way of the normal deployment and retrieval of the main rode.

Doing this woud be a pain in the butt which is why we won't.