New ground tackle

After posting yesterdays entry I went by the nearby consignment store (second hand boating stuff). They had a number of anchors for sale, different sorts, styles and sizes. The boat has a real nice compartment on the bow, a vertical locker that appears to be made to fit a Danforth shape anchor perfectly. But, it turns out that my Danforth anchor is too big for it.

Having read a little more in the various magazines and cruising books about proper anchoring, and what would be considered adequate outfit, I had decided the boat needed at least one more anchor. That would allow me having two anchors off the bow and another one off the stern (for cases with a lot of wind shifts, or strong tidal currents). Unfortunately I had not measured my custom anchor locker, so I went back to the boat, had lunch, took my measurements and went back to the store. I ended up buying a Seachoice 13 (which is shaped exactly like a Danforth) which came with a lit bit of chain and 38 meters of nylon attached.

Bought a shackle and a thimble to outfit it nicely and went back to the boat. The anchor fits in the custom locker perfectly, and it also fits the anchor mount (that I had taken of the pulpit just last week when I was putting up the wind generator). Now I have two options: at sea I will keep it in the locker. When I expect to be using a stern anchor quite a bit I can keep the new anchor ready on the stern (if I put the stainless steel anchor mount back).

I had to saw though a shackle between the chain and the nylon since it had frozen up. I can’t store the rope with the anchor, but the chain does store with the anchor. Now I need to keep the shackle from freezing up (which will depend a lot for how long the anchor will be staying under water, we’ll see).

Measured the chain and rope and marked the rope at 5 meter intervals with electrical tape. The other anchor rodes all came marked with the boat. And it took me a while to figure out what the logic in the markings is. I measured some marks a little while ago, and there was 7.20 meters between them. That is 24 foot (I had previously guestimated that maybe they were 25 foot marks). To me 24 foot is not really a round number, until this weekend someone suggested that it is marked in fathoms (as we all know there are 6 feet in a fathom), which means the marks are a round 4 fathoms apart.

This entry was posted in At anchor. Bookmark the permalink.