Best technique for anchor chain washdown?

The friendliest place on the web for anyone who enjoys boating.
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
See posts with no answers
angus99

angus99

Guru
Joined
Feb 19, 2012
Messages
2,750
Location
US
Vessel Name
Stella Maris
Vessel Make
Defever 44
I'm thinking of installing a decent raw water pump and using one of those cheap wands to blast off Chesapeake mud as the chain comes in; followed by a quick freshwater rinse (fw is already installed at the bow) to keep the chain locker from smelling.

Rather than hijack the topic on freshwater pumps, I have a couple of related questions for those of you with both fresh and raw water at the bow: how do you approach cleaning a mud-clogged anchor chain? Rinse the chain as it comes in or after it's piled in the chain locker? How satisfied are you with the results?
 
We use fresh water as the chain is coming in, stopping once and a while if the mud is really thick along with the anchor, typically not much water is used and the corrosive properties of salt water is gone.
 
Angus, I also plan to do the same. I plan to have my wasdown outlet on the deck near the anchor chain pit and wash the chain as it comes out of water before letting it goes in the pit. Curently we are doing this using water buckets and it is really not convenient.
 
Chain and anchor washing is a compromise between effectiveness and ease of use. Someone suggested a cheap 110V pressure washer that you bring up to the foredeck, hook up to fresh water, start the genset or inverter to power it and then blast the chain. Well that will work nicely, but I don't want all of that bother.

I use a permanently mounted raw water pump. Find the highest volume one you can. Volume as much as pressure is what removes mud, so don't hook it up to a small volume nozzle. With a high volume pump- 4-5 gph, you should hook it up to a decent size thru hull- 1" minimum and use 1" hose to connect to the pump's suction. Then run 3/4" hose to your deck fitting even though it might be 1/2". That will give you the most flow. Even better would be a hose bib.

If you don't like he smell of a clean chain washed by salt water sitting in your anchor locker, you probably shouldn't be cruising :)

David
 
Last edited:
Someone posted awhile back.....

When preparing to leave, if time is available, they start bringing up the chain in increments of the water depth every so often.

That way, it sits in the water column and often much washes off.

Then my technique is to shoot down the vertical chain so most of the water is hitting chain from roller to water.

I just have the standard 4gpm 55psi saltwater wash down pump.

Some mud is unavoidable so next good rain at dock or anyhow, the chain gets washed, inspected and restowed.
 
I have a salt water wash down pump plumbed to the bow. I attach a hose and a standard spray nozzle. It works well to clean the anchor chain. I haven't had smell issues using salt water wash down.
 
I probably look kind of foolish pulling the anchor chain in. Have 2 hoses with spray nozzles and activate the windlass with a foot switch. One hose is attached to a 7 GPM raw water pump that sprays the chain continuously to clear mud, etc. The other hose is hooked to the boat fresh water system. That one sprays about 1 GPM to rinse the salt off the clean chain. The system works pretty well. One of the things I did during my refit was to plumb a bottom drain in my chain locker to the shower drain sump. Several times a year I will take a dock hose and spray down the chain piles in the locker. Water drains into the sump and is pumped overboard so the bilge stays dry and clean.

Ted
 
I have a raw water system mostly installed by the PO. The raw water inlet is shared by the head and the washdown. The PO had a valve that had to be moved with each change of use. I replaced the valve with a "T" and everything works fine. I figured neither of us would be flushing the head while we were lifting the anchor. I replaced the short section of garden hose and sprayer with one of the commercial coiled hoses that stores in a cylinder below deck. I also installed a switch for the pump so the breaker could be left "ON" rather than being used as a switch.


The main problem with the system is, that it must be turned off between uses because there's no certainty that the nozzle won't leak when stored. This means I have to remember to turn the pump on before raising the anchor and turn it off when done.


The end result is, I seldom use the washdown system. Even when I do, the muddy water left on the chain runs all over the deck and I still have a mess.


If I see a lot of mud on the anchor or lower part of the chain I just lower it back into the water a couple times and that rinses it.
 
angus99 said:
I'm thinking of installing a decent raw water pump and using one of those cheap wands to blast off Chesapeake mud as the chain comes in; followed by a quick freshwater rinse (fw is already installed at the bow) to keep the chain locker from smelling.

Rather than hijack the topic on freshwater pumps, I have a couple of related questions for those of you with both fresh and raw water at the bow: how do you approach cleaning a mud-clogged anchor chain? Rinse the chain as it comes in or after it's piled in the chain locker? How satisfied are you with the results?
Click to expand...

We have a salt water washdown for the cockpit, so we added a line forward to the bow, along with spigot. We rinse the rode as it comes up, before it hits the pulpit. No freshwater rinse afterwards, and no particular odor in the rope locker.

I could use a more forceful stream, so next time our pump craps out I'll probably look for more GPM/more PSI.

One thing we did that helped when we came back here to the Chesapeake is to change to a combination rode. We only have about 25' of leading chain, now, and the the rope doesn't pick up all that mud.


psneeld said:
Someone posted awhile back.....

When preparing to leave, if time is available, they start bringing up the chain in increments of the water depth every so often.

That way, it sits in the water column and often much washes off.

Then my technique is to shoot down the vertical chain so most of the water is hitting chain from roller to water.
Click to expand...

I want to start trying that incremental recovery technique, too. Sounds useful.


Drake said:
We have a salt water washdown on the bow. We tried every nozzle we could find, but nothing really worked to cut sticky mud off the chain and anchor until we got one of these:

https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B00H90432A/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o09_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

It works great.
Click to expand...

Interesting, looks good on paper. Seems like getting our washdown stream much closer to the chain down below the pulpit would be very useful, and the typical squeeze nozzle doesn't really do that well enough over the distance.

-Chris
 
djmarchand said:
If you don't like he smell of a clean chain washed by salt water sitting in your anchor locker, you probably shouldn't be cruising :)

David
Click to expand...

I always appreciate your advice, Dave, but I gotta tell you the ". . . you probably shouldn't be cruising" sound bite isn't welcome. It's gotten to be a catch phrase on TF and I'm sure you didn't mean anything serious, but it's a gratuitous lecture that most experienced boaters don't need to hear.

Back on topic: Nothing wrong with salt water besides the critters that come with it, die and stink up an anchor locker. I'm sure people who put up with holding tank/sanitary hose smells used to think that was the price for owning indoor plumbing on a boat as well.
 
Thanks for the ideas, everybody.

Ted, yours is the system I was thinking of adopting. Glad it works for you. We do have odors coming from the chain locker. I need to clean it out and see what may have crawled in there. :D
 
angus99 said:
Thanks for the ideas, everybody.

Ted, yours is the system I was thinking of adopting. Glad it works for you. We do have odors coming from the chain locker. I need to clean it out and see what may have crawled in there. :D
Click to expand...

When I bought my boat, the anchor locker was a mess. The existing drain left about an inch of water in the bottom. Pretty sure neither of the previous owners ever pulled all the chain out to switch it end for end. Each rode had 75' of 3/4" rope that was stiff as wire covered in mud and salt encrustation. The salt pickling removed the galvanize off of some of the links to where I had to regalvanize the chains and cut 50' off one rode as it was so badly deteriorated. That's what got me so motivated to install a bottom drain and developing a better wash down system. When I rinse the chain pile in the locker, I put water and Joy dish washing soap in a garden fertilizer sprayer that attaches to the dock hose. I soap and then rinse. Takes about 5 minutes and smells really clean. Joy dissolves and removes salt on contact.

Ted
 
We have a forward emergency bilge pump which is plumbed to a through hull with a y valve on the suction side. The discharge goes to a fire hose nozzle on the bow fixed just below the pulpit. We incrementally retrieve our rode so it hangs directly in front of the hose nozzle. In anything over 25 knots of wind we forget about cleaning and just deal with it on our next drop. Even though the pump flow rate is 70 gallons per minute there is some mud that is just plain evil and isn't going to be released until it's dry and hard in the anchor locker. That's where the shop vac comes in handy. Twice a year I usually dump all the chain and muck out the anchor locker. We also hose down the chain pile with fresh water after retrieval. No smells and a clean locker make maintenance there less of a chore.
 
So far from NJ to the keys....I have had.way less.problems with mud and critters than sea grasses, seaweed.

Gotta pull the stuff off as only a pressure washer would blast it off.
 
"there is some mud that is just plain evil and isn't going to be released until it's dry and hard in the anchor locker."

IF the chain locker is above the WL using the deck wash to constantly spray onto the piled chain while underway should clean the stack nicely.

A larger than usual overboard drain will be required for the chain locker to not plug up with mud chunks.

And the boat wont smell like low tide.
 
I too am in the Chesapeake and as soon as I get the anchor off the bottom I put the boat in reverse and continue to pull the chain up using my windlass, this has always left the chain and anchor clean without a wash down pump.
 
Over the years we found the best solution is not anchor.:D the boat had well still sorta has a raw water wash down, but I had the thru hull filled in and glassed over as we seldom used. Future owners could easily hook up again. What we use the bow shower hose spray thing which is fresh water. When we bought the eagle it was ugly shark blue water ready which was way more boat than we need and a lot of stuff we didn't use and/or maintain. Now she is a comfortable live aboard dock queen. :flowers:
 
I added powered ventilation (not the pathetic solar fan)to the anchor locker. Helps immensely with drying out and eliminating odors. Air is pulled into the locker from the boat, so no smells in the boat
 
I also made a washdown wand out of 1/2" pvc capped the end, drilled two tiny holes in cap. My pump is high pressure, but little lacking on volume. Wand does the trick nicely and allows me to keep mess way below pulpit level
 
psneeld said:
Someone posted awhile back.....

When preparing to leave, if time is available, they start bringing up the chain in increments of the water depth every so often.

That way, it sits in the water column and often much washes off.

Then my technique is to shoot down the vertical chain so most of the water is hitting chain from roller to water.

I just have the standard 4gpm 55psi saltwater wash down pump.

Some mud is unavoidable so next good rain at dock or anyhow, the chain gets washed, inspected and restowed.
Click to expand...

double down on this. I pull up only the chain off the bottom then wait and repeat as often as needed for depth and then wash down is mainly for the anchor and last few feet of chain.
 
psneeld said:
Someone posted awhile back.....

When preparing to leave, if time is available, they start bringing up the chain in increments of the water depth every so often.

That way, it sits in the water column and often much washes off.

Then my technique is to shoot down the vertical chain so most of the water is hitting chain from roller to water.

I just have the standard 4gpm 55psi saltwater wash down pump.

Some mud is unavoidable so next good rain at dock or anyhow, the chain gets washed, inspected and restowed.
Click to expand...



I recall someone posting the same idea on incrementally bringing in the chain and can't recall who it was. I have started doing the same thing and it works well.
 
I have a new, never used, galvanized anchor chain in my locker now. When we start cruising I plan to use the 55 psi raw water washdown hose/nozzle to clean the chain as it comes up. Once the chain is retrieved I'll dump a gallon of a fresh water/ Salt-X solution down the windlass tube into the chain locker, over the chain pile, there is a drain in the locker floor to the shower sump so the water will be pumped overboard. Has anyone tried this?
 
Steve said:
I have a new, never used, galvanized anchor chain in my locker now. When we start cruising I plan to use the 55 psi raw water washdown hose/nozzle to clean the chain as it comes up. Once the chain is retrieved I'll dump a gallon of a fresh water/ Salt-X solution down the windlass tube into the chain locker, over the chain pile, there is a drain in the locker floor to the shower sump so the water will be pumped overboard. Has anyone tried this?
Click to expand...


My washdown pump can either supply fresh or salt water. I always use fresh unless I am going for a longer cruise when I need to conserve fresh water. I spray down the chain as it comes over the roller as it comes up. After it is up, I spray off any mud that got on deck then spray down the pile in the locker. My locker has an easy to open hatch that makes this easy.

When I get back to the home dock, I take the dock hose and give the anchor a very thorough rinse. The locker never smells and the chain hasn't rusted. I am not sure what advantage the Salt-X would have over simply copious amounts of fresh water.
 
Fresh water wash down all the way. Avoids much of the mold and the sea smells lingering.

But, God Bless Art DeFever, 400 gallons of water capacity.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

AlaskaProf
Anchor locker revelation
2
Replies
54
Views
9K
Osprey69
Osprey69
3
  • Locked
For Sale: 2006 Bayliner Discovery 246, Upgraded Cabin Cruiser, Solar Arrays & Battery Bank
Replies
1
Views
2K
3DaysAtATime
3
straycat
  • Locked
For Sale: Prairie 29 1980 hull 51
Replies
12
Views
6K
Bob meek
B
U
  • Locked
For Sale: Sold-1980 Albin 36 Trawler
Replies
16
Views
5K
Donna
Donna
Roger Long
Chain washdown pump capacity?
Replies
20
Views
3K
FF
FF

Latest posts

Back
Top Bottom