Marking Anchor Chain

[hummingway]

I agree. I look for 20-30 feet of water (at low tide) and rarely let out less then 125 feet of chain. What I was really getting at was that sometimes on the coast of BC you wind up pretty close to shore and want to know when there's enough chain out to call it good so having 25 foot intervals is usefull - after the first hundred anyway.

[s/v Jedi]

Originally Posted by hummingway

I agree. I look for 20-30 feet of water (at low tide) and rarely let out less then 125 feet of chain. What I was really getting at was that sometimes on the coast of BC you wind up pretty close to shore and want to know when there's enough chain out to call it good so having 25 foot intervals is usefull - after the first hundred anyway.

I think I don't understand. Let's say 20' at low tide. At high tide that would be 32' right? With 125' of chain out, your scope is 3.9:1
With my markers I have 120' or 180' translating to either 3.75:1 and 5.6:1 which sounds as choice enough. If I want to go in between I can easily put out a bit more or less without using markers. After a bit of anchoring one can count off how many feet the windlass feeds out at "electric down". I can find the mid point between the 60' markers within 10' accuracy easily and I don't think more precision is needed.

Sure I would like to exactly know how many feet are out... but that wish is offset with the reality of creating and maintaining that many markers and the importance of getting it down to a feet precision.

RoaringGirl: with marks every 5 meters (20') I would go crazy. I would have 18 sets of markers on my chain. I now have 6 sets and find it a burden already.

ciao!
Nick.

[Roaring Girl]

Originally Posted by s/v Jedi

RoaringGirl: with marks every 5 meters (20') I would go crazy. I would have 18 sets of markers on my chain. I now have 6 sets and find it a burden already..

Well - we have 80m of chain, so it's 16 marks, and it's just a couple of hours once a year really, and like I say it means we check the chain thoroughly at the same time.

[s/v Jedi]

Originally Posted by Roaring Girl

Well - we have 80m of chain, so it's 16 marks, and it's just a couple of hours once a year really, and like I say it means we check the chain thoroughly at the same time.

We can only do a job like that every 3 years during haul-out because we are normally at anchor full time. Even the part of the chain not in the water, I wouldn't like to paint it on deck with the tradewinds blowing my ears off ;-)

Also, I can't imagine you ever used the 5 or 10 meter marks. They must be there just to "make it complete" or something? ;-) I have never seen someone anchored with just 5 meters of chain out.

When I put my anchor down in sand for a couple of weeks, any paint on the part that touches the sand is gone.

cheers,
Nick.

[skipperaris]

Originally Posted by s/v Jedi

Hi Aris,

I have used those too. They seemed like the ultimate solution at the time. However, after two weeks in the water they all have the same color and need a brush to have the color come back again. After a couple of months I started loosing them where the chain touches the seabed and around the windlass. They were all gone after a year.

cheers,
Nick.

Hi Nick,
I understand what your conditions are, now. Obviously you are using your anchor and chain as a 'permanent' mooring.
It is understandable that when you are using your anchor for a longish length of time things are not the same.
When you are over a sandy ground, the sand would abrade whatever colour you may have used and over a muddy ground it will all look uniformly muddy.
Over a 'fertile' ground and it is all covered with weed and barnacles growing on everything unless you paint it all with antifouling paint.

I've never heard of anybody antifouling their chain and anchor. Have you?

Cheers,

Aris

[s/v Jedi]

Originally Posted by skipperaris

I understand what your conditions are, now. Obviously you are using your anchor and chain as a 'permanent' mooring.
It is understandable that when you are using your anchor for a longish length of time things are not the same.

We prefer a nice anchorage over a marina for much more than the costs involved with marina's. But some places have no good anchorages and marina's is all you get. I think I would be at anchor in Greece most of the time though. May be the big difference is that we are aboard full time. Before we got to the marina we're in now, we lived at anchor for 5 years, just docking for an hour a year to get fuel. 99% of the boats in the Caribbean do it that way; most places there even isn't a marina.

But that doesn't mean we don't haul the anchor up... we do that whenever we sail to another anchorage ;-)

When you are over a sandy ground, the sand would abrade whatever colour you may have used and over a muddy ground it will all look uniformly muddy.
Over a 'fertile' ground and it is all covered with weed and barnacles growing on everything unless you paint it all with antifouling paint.

Mud is easy to deal with using the deck wash pump. We always wash all the mud off before the chain comes on deck. Weed and barnacles are only a problem between the surface and a couple meters down (they need light). If we anchor somewhere for a couple of weeks, we put out more chain a couple of days before leaving, hoping to get rid of it dragging it back and forth over the seabed without much light. The day before leaving we pull it up again and clean it with a scraper and hard brush.

The worst I've seen was Cartagena: after only two weeks the anchor rode was 8" thick with mussels. Took two hours with a scraper. You have to scrape the bottom and prop every two weeks there.

I've never heard of anybody antifouling their chain and anchor. Have you?

No, the paint would be gone too quickly. But for a place like Cartagena I would be mad enough to antifoul 3 or 4 meters of the chain. It was horrible there.

cheers,
Nick.

[barnakiel]

Originally Posted by s/v Jedi

Also, your numbering scheme gets very confusing when you're beyond 240'.

Pooh! Small clunker here. Fave anchoring depth - 30'. No winch ...

Small boat - small challenges, big boat - big challenges !;-)

Cheers,
barnie

[klem]

What happened to the good old days of simply measuring chain in shots? The choice was between 1 and 2 shots most nights and it didn't require complicated markings.

[s/v Jedi]

@Barnie: you don't need a big boat to have a windlass. I forgot what boat you have (update your profile! ;-) but I would want a windlass on 30' or more at least.

@klem: ha shots... chain was sold in shots but it was called "shackles" when anchoring. One shackle is 15 fathoms or 90' so I am not that far out with my 60' markers.... I might go for shackle markers instead ;-) I have a bit more than 3 shackles so that's easy, 3 markers.
Which brings me to the cable, which is how much we should have aboard: 608' or 1/10th of a nautical mile. The old rule was:

Twice the square root of the depth of water in fathoms = the number of shackles of cable.

This means 1 cable allowed for anchoring in 68.5' of water so they used a scope of almost 9:1

When I hear the anchoring procedure of a ship on the VHF the captain still calls for so many shackles to pay out so it's still in use.

So commercial ships use 90' per marker.

cheers,
Nick.

[Minggat]

Skipperaris,

Smart looking stuff. I will be looking to find out who sells it in my corner of the world... as soon as I find out which corner I'm in.

[skipperaris]

Originally Posted by s/v Jedi

But some places have no good anchorages and marina's is all you get. I think I would be at anchor in Greece most of the time though. May be the big difference is that we are aboard full time.

Hi Nick,
In Greece you normally dock in a port.
Marinas are few and far apart so the port is the usual place where you find shelter.
Cost is very reasonable these days.
There was a time when some bright spark raised port dues excessively in the past Greece got some bad publicity and people would anchor off for economy. Very soon port dues were adjusted back to their previous low level.
cheers,
Aris

[klem]

Nick, the reason that I joked about using shots is that the commercial boats that I worked on do use that to measure like you mentioned in your post. When they buy chain, they buy by the shot and then use connecting links which are usually marked with a lashing or red paint. I am glad to know that someone still knows how to measure in shackles.

[Anders]

I use cable ties. One small black for 5 meters and one big white for every 10 meters and I restart the marking for every 30 meters. 25 meters would have 2 big white and one small black. I keep the tails on them so that I can see them from the cockpit where I do all the anchoring.
Tried paint but it wore off to quickly.
Tried the chain markers but they were difficult to see in the water and impossible to see from the cockpit and they started to fall off.
I know people that have made a cheap chain counter from a wireless bicycle computer.

[barnakiel]

Originally Posted by s/v Jedi

@Barnie: you don't need a big boat to have a windlass. I forgot what boat you have (update your profile! ;-) but I would want a windlass on 30' or more at least.

Allegro 27. 25' waterline, 3k kg displ..

She came without one, but there were two or three times when I wished I had a manual winch to help my back.

I believe up to a boat size a winch is a luxury. And the 'boat size' sure a completely individual factor. If there is a winch on a smaller boat - I would not throw it overboard, would I.

barnie

[s/v Jedi]

Yes, at 27.25' it's a hard call. But when you are anchored and the wind is blowing 40 knots, how do you get the anchor up without a windlass? I tried that with a 42' Dehler and had a hell of a time and will call it virtually impossible (I did manage though...)

cheers,
Nick.