ben2go
Guru
OK, so how much does an "average bag of flour" weigh?
My anchor weighs 33 lb. Is that more or less than an average bag of flour?
According to my girlfriend, your anchor weighs 33 bags of flour.
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OK, so how much does an "average bag of flour" weigh?
My anchor weighs 33 lb. Is that more or less than an average bag of flour?
According to my girlfriend, your anchor weighs 33 bags of flour.
:lol:That sounds like a henway!
Rope can twist. Chain might twist a bit, but it will straighten out as it passes through the windlass (assuming you have a windlass). If there is any rotary tension on the chain, the anchor will begin spinning to relieve that tension as soon as it disengages from the sea bottom. If necessary, one can pause and let the anshor spin to it's natural position once the anchor clears the water.
At that point, bring it up the rest of the way, secure it, and move on.
300ft of chain plus the weight of the anchor will require a robust windlas.
FF
Well,, not really. The ony chain the windlass has to lift is the chain between the pulpit and the bottom. Even if you put out a mile of it, the only chain the windlass is lifting is the section between the boat and the bottom. So the windlass only needs to be strong enough to lift that amount of chain plus the weight of the anchor. Naturally you'd want a safety factor, so you wouldn't size a windlass to be able to lift that weight and no more. And of course the weight will vary with the anchoring depth, so that has to be taken into account.
We carry 200' of all-chain rode (should really be 250-300 feet but when we bought it we didn't know what we know now) but the most chain the windlass has ever had to lift is probably 40-50 feet. The anchor weighs 44 pounds out of the water.
That's pretty much our approach as well. Plus a bit of thruster to keep the vessel in line. We use a 1/2" snub line about 30 feet long that attaches with a shackle to the chain. We'll bring that on board first and while we're detaching the shackle and coiling the snubber, the boat has generally moved forward sufficiently that it is standing over the anchor, at least in most wind/tide conditions.Or to raise some chain with the windlass, then stop the windlass and let the weight of the chain settling back down to the bottom to start moving the boat forward, raise some more chain, the boat continues to move forward, and so on until you're over the anchor. This is what we do unless there is suffiicent wind or current to prevent the boat from coasting forward. Then we'll use a bit of power to move the boat forward. But most of the time we simply let the weight of the chain pull us forward as we raise the rode in increments.