Dare I Say Another Anchor Article

Marin said:

Regarding the anchoring of ships, Rick Boggs just sent me this link to a document which defines how anchor and chain size is to be determined based on the formula characteristics of the ship, how the anchor is to be set (note that they say the pull of the chain or cable on the anchor should be horizontal), and a whole bunch of other definitions and requirements.

http://www.iacs.org.uk/document/public/Publications/Unified_requirements/PDF/UR_A_pdf148.PDF

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Very interesting document.

One comment relative to the requirements and general certification for yachts as well. While these aren't gospel and beyond approach, they are independent. There are two levels of certification beyond standard approval. They are HHP and SHHP (High Holding Power and Super High Holding Power). It is my understanding the many Rocna anchors are SHHP. It's my understanding that many Sarca are HHP. This information is from each of their websites.

A HHP must hold twice that of a standard stockless anchor of the same mass. A SHHP must hold four times that of a standard stockless anchor of the same mass.

Now the fact some anchors are certified doesn't mean it applies to all anchors from a company. Also, the manufacturing facility must be and Rocna was once criticized for representing certification (as they were) but then their Chinese facility production not yet being certified at that time.

At the risk of this being the wrong thread...

The boat I have (1983 43' Ocean Alexander) came with two anchors, a 80KGS?? and a rather large fortress. Both have 300' foot of 7/16 chain, and untold length of rope as well.

Based on the comments of the Rocna I wouldnt mind dumping the 2 anchors for 1 rocna and maybe 200' chain. It might go a long way to leveling the waterline back out (Theres a ton of concrete block in the aft trying to keep it level).

Anyone think this is a bad idea? My experience with anchors are with trailer boats and never been anchored in storms that would test one.

Speaking from experience you can't go wrong with a Rocna. However you might want to think about how much rode. Depending on where you plan on anchoring and the nature of the bottom you may not need that much or you might need more.

We have 200' of chain on our boat but we really should have a least 250.' Three hundred would be even better and we'll probably do this once we start making longer cruises north.

But if where you will be anchoring is not all that deep then 200' may be just fine. You may be able to get away with less, although the chain you don't have is like the runway behind you; it doesn't do you any good when you need more.

A combination rode can work well and will certainly reduce the weight in the bow. But if your boat can carry it without compromising its trim I think an all-chain rode is the better way to go. The folks at Rocna in New Zealand emphasised the use of all-chain rode when I talked to them back in 2007 or 6 about their anchor, and the instructions that came with the Rocna we subsequently purchased also emphasized the benefits of using all chain rode with the anchor and scopes of 5:1 to 7:1.

Probably a good way to go is to talk to boaters in your area who anchor out a lot in the places you would like to go and find out what they are using for rode and how long.

If you believe that you may find yourself experiencing storms while at anchor, remember that the more rode you can let out the better because it lowers the angle of pull on the anchor which helps it stay in the bottom.

I will be glad to help you ballast the boat by taking the Fortress off your hands. Send me a pm if you decide to get rid of it. However, if I was you, I would keep it, even if I had a Rocna. Good, light anchor, perfectly suited to your area. Dang, I just shot myself in the foot!

Nobody mentions Mantus anchors. I see their tests beat Rocna

Capthead,
I did but I'm outa here.

Talking to you guys is like beating my head against the wall.

manyboats said:

Capthead,
I did but I'm outa here.

Talking to you guys is like beating my head against the wall.

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That's probably less damaging and painful than letting a big heavy anchor of any make slip out of your hands and drop on your foot... when you could have had a big but lightweight and very efficient Fortress anchor to easily kept a solid grip!

"There may be trouble ahead, but while there`s moonlight and music, and love and romance, let`s face the music and dance..."

I have a bet that this was going to be a hundred post thread. Come on guys. You can do it.

100!


There you go Parks!

I just pushed the button! How did you do that so fast?

I've found the strong currents and winds in the San Francisco estuary and its thick, heavy mud are sufficient to secure the anchor without using the engine. The anchor (claw) jerks the boat to a stop.

Marin said:

I think it's pretty obvious that the chain lying on the bottom keeps the boat in place until such time as the pressure applied to the boat by wind and/or current lifts the chain off the bottom.

Weight is weight. It doesn't matter if it's a length of chain or an anchor or a big rock. Until that weight is moved, it will hold whatever is attached to it in place.

The photo below was taken on a day when we happened to use our trip line and float. The length of the float line was adjusted to account for the tide range, but otherwise it had no other slack in it. So it floated more or less directly above the anchor.

We always use a scope of 5:1 to 7:1. And we deploy our anchor by lowering it as we are drifting back, thus paying out the chain, and then we set the anchor using the boat. Once we've stopped backing against the rode the boat moves forward as the chain sags back onto the bottom.

The place the photo was taken is a small bay in which the current changes almost continuously. So the boat never just sits in one place unless there's enough wind to make it do that. The end result is the boat is always moving around, sometimes describing a complete circle over time.

And guess what the boat was circling on this day. Not the anchor; the boat never got anywhere near the trip line float. It circled the spot on the bottom where the chain touched down from the pulpit.

Granted, the force applied to the boat was not great. So the weight of the chain was sufficient to keep the boat in the same place more or less. The anchor, in this particular instance and all the other instances like it, played no role whatsoever in keeping the boat in place because the "strain" on the rode never overcame the weight of the chain lying on the bottom so a good portion of the chain never moved and thus never transmitted the pull of the boat to the anchor.

If the wind had come up, absolutely the anchor would have begun to play a role. The chain would have been pulled on and picked up and if the wind was strong enough eventually the pull of the boat would have been transmitted all the way down to the anchor.

But to say the weight of the chain doesn't keep the boat in place is to contradict some fairly proven principles, like gravity.

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Please show me more of your trip line and float! I need to do the same but want to do it correctly.....

Alaskan Sea-Duction said:

Please show me more of your trip line and float! I need to do the same but want to do it correctly.....

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It's about as simple a thing as exists on the planet. Our anchor has a small hole in the wide end of the fluke for a trip line shackle. We leave a shackle in the anchor fluke all the time. We have a 100' length of nylon with a carabiner at one end that clips to the shackle in the fluke. The other end of the line gets tied to the float in the photo.

That's it.

If we ever needed to anchor in more than 100' of water (at maximum tide) we'd get a longer line. But we don't anticipate needing to do that anytime soon. Most of the time we anchor in 30 feet of water give or take.

There are a number of ways to rig a trip line and like everything else everyone has their favorite. Some use a pulley and a weight to take the slack out of the line and compensate for the tide. We want things like this to be a simple as possible with minimal hassle to use so we kept our trip line very basic.

When we use the trip line to actually back the anchor out we feed the line through the port bow hawse and haul the anchor out backwards using the line gypsy on our Lofrans Tigres windlass which more or less lines up with the port hawse.

It's a dirt simple system to deploy and retrieve and we've never had it tangle up in the rode or do anything other than what it's supposed to do. The one change I sometimes contemplate is changing the nylon line to a dacron or some other non-stretching line. The jury's still out on that one.....

Marin said:

It's about as simple a thing as exists on the planet. Our anchor has a small hole in the wide end of the fluke for a trip line shackle. We leave a shackle in the anchor fluke all the time. We have a 100' length of nylon with a carabiner at one end that clips to the shackle in the fluke. The other end of the line gets tied to the float in the photo.

That's it.

If we ever needed to anchor in more than 100' of water (at maximum tide) we'd get a longer line. But we don't anticipate needing to do that anytime soon. Most of the time we anchor in 30 feet of water give or take.

There are a number of ways to rig a trip line and like everything else everyone has their favorite. Some use a pulley and a weight to take the slack out of the line and compensate for the tide. We want things like this to be a simple as possible with minimal hassle to use so we kept our trip line very basic.

When we use the trip line to actually back the anchor out we feed the line through the port bow hawse and haul the anchor out backwards using the line gypsy on our Lofrans Tigres windlass which more or less lines up with the port hawse.

It's a dirt simple system to deploy and retrieve and we've never had it tangle up in the rode or do anything other than what it's supposed to do. The one change I sometimes contemplate is changing the nylon line to a dacron or some other non-stretching line. The jury's still out on that one.....

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OK so see if I get this straight. Line to anchor in trip hole. How does the float attach to the trip line and then do you bring the trip line back to the boat or is it at the end of the trip line?

Alaskan Sea-Duction said:

How does the float attach to the trip line

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It's tied to it.

...and then do you bring the trip line back to the boat or is it at the end of the trip line?

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Not sure I follow your wording there.

When we deploy a trip line, to retrieve it we pull in the all-chain rode with the windlass in stages: pull some, stop and let the boat drift closer to the anchor as the catenary comes out of the chain, then pull some more, stop and let the boat ease closer to the anchor, and so on. We never put any more strain on the windlass than pulling in slack chain.

If a current or wind prevent this from working my wife drives the boat to the anchor as I pull the rode in with the windlass.

When the bow is over the anchor, the trip line float will be floating next to the bow since it's over the anchor, too. We used to pick up the float with our 16' telescoping boathook. I've since redesigned the pole so it's now tall enough that I can reach it from the foredeck unless it's too far out to reach, in which case we use the boathook.

I pull the float on board (my wife runs the boat during all this so I'm the only one on deck) and then I take all the slack out of the chain rode with the windlass to see what we're dealing with. At this point there are three things that can happen.

1, The anchor breaks out on its own under minimal pull from the windlass. Sometimes the boat bobbing up and down is all that's needed to do this.
2. The anchor does not want to break out with minimal pull, so the next step is to break it out with the boat which we do with our short, very strong anchor setting and break-out line that's fastened to a deck cleat. Again, no load is applied directly to the windlass gears or the pulpit when we do this. In fact the windlass is backed off during this process.
3. The anchor won't break out using the boat so we determine we need to back it out with the trip line.

The trip line is used only to back the anchor out. Once it's free of the bottom we recover it in the normal way.

During recovery I operate the windlass with a foot and pull the trip line aboard by hand as the anchor comes up. Once the anchor is on the pulpit I unclip the trip line from the shackle in the fluke and that's that.

Once we're simply hauling the anchor up off the bottom there is generally no need to maneuver the boat so my wife comes out to the foredeck and takes over dealing with the trip line while I continue running the windlass and washing down the chain as it comes aboard.

Takes a lot less time to do it than describe it.

Don't know it this was mentioned... but, when having trouble getting anchor to un-set:

I simply bring in anchor rode until it is fully vertical with bow. Then I gently power over it in opposite direction to center of my recent swing range.


Only once in late 1960's did that fail; because... in Block Island we'd dropped anchor into a mass of discarded wire cables. Tried for hours to free the Danforth anchor. Decided not wise to swim down some 30'+ into the cable/wire mess; also, was in late fall... water had become cold as the gulf stream already changed course for the winter. It would have been a bare skin "free dive".

In addition to our trip line we also carry a heavy steel logging ring that can be put around the anchor rode and slid/pulled down the rode to the anchor and then over the shank to the fluke. In theory maneuvering the boat around behind the anchor and then using the windlass gypsy drum to haul in the line attached to the ring will back the anchor out in the same manner as a trip line.

We've never had to use this thing-- it's our go-to tool to back an anchor out that gets stuck and we didn't use the trip line.

I suppose in theory it should work but it won't back the anchor as cleanly as the trip line which pulls directly on the (back) end of the fluke itself and so slides the anchor out from whatever's holding it very cleanly. The ring is more likely to slip or get caught up itself so we actually don't put much faith in it although the theory is good.

Thanks for the explanation Marin. I appreciate the time to type it. Helps a lot.

Alaskan Sea-Duction said:

Thanks for the explanation Marin. I appreciate the time to type it. Helps a lot.

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No problem. It actually takes me very little time to type these things up. Just a few minutes while I'm waiting for a computer to render out an effect. It beats just sitting here watching the progress line creep across the screen.

Marin,
What size is your trip line?

If you are anchored in 30' of water with 100' trip line there could be quite a bit of line floating on the surface. Does this ever present a problem while maneuvering during retrieval?

Thanks!
Steve

The trip line is 100' long. Once the anchor and trip line are deployed, since I have to take the dog ashore anyway, I simply motor over to the trip line float in the dinghy, coil up all the slack in the trip line except enough to compensate for the tide range, and hang the coil from the float. So the float is always right above the anchor, give or take a bit.

Marin said:

The trip line is 100' long. Once the anchor and trip line are deployed, since I have to take the dog ashore anyway, I simply motor over to the trip line float in the dinghy, coil up all the slack in the trip line except enough to compensate for the tide range, and hang the coil from the float. So the float is always right above the anchor, give or take a bit.

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Your too smart dog queue you in on that?? - lol

Art said:

Your too smart dog queue you in on that?? - lol

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Yep.

Marin said:

Yep.

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Figures

We let him dock the boat here in Anacortes yesterday as it was pretty windy. He does a much better job maneuvering in tight quarters with a crosswind than either of us do. He did a pretty good job but it's hard for him to go back and forth between the shifters and the throttles as they are a good foot or so apart. So we had to help him out a bit with that. He's developed a technique whereby he flicks his ears to indicate if he wants a shift change or a power lever change and which engine he wants it on. Clever little creature, he is.

Marin said:

We let him dock the boat here in Anacortes yesterday as it was pretty windy. He does a much better job maneuvering in tight quarters with a crosswind than either of us do. He did a pretty good job but it's hard for him to go back and forth between the shifters and the throttles as they are a good foot or so apart. So we had to help him out a bit with that. He's developed a technique whereby he flicks his ears to indicate if he wants a shift change or a power lever change and which engine he wants it on. Clever little creature, he is.

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His tail must wag like crazy once he gets you two to set the lines! :lol:

Marin said:

The trip line is 100' long. Once the anchor and trip line are deployed, since I have to take the dog ashore anyway, I simply motor over to the trip line float in the dinghy, coil up all the slack in the trip line except enough to compensate for the tide range, and hang the coil from the float. So the float is always right above the anchor, give or take a bit.

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Thanks for the info

the 5/16 HT chain holds my 44 foot sundeck extremely well, but that was not the case until I shackled 105 Lb mantus anchor to the end. Now I sleep very well at night on the hook