Photos of Anchors Setting

[Kenomac]

Final view of Kobra.

[malbert73]

Originally Posted by noelex 77

This was a Delta with the fluke and shank buried. Yeah!

It has taken a bit of distance to set, but in the end it has set very well, although some of the bury is from heaping up the sand. It was in almost the same area as the previous CQR copy.

You can see the layer of distinctly different and softer white sand. While the setting distance is long, the progressive dig in with an increasing amount of white sand is great to see.

So how did you ID these anchors? You pull them out to check?


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[noelex 77]

Originally Posted by malbert73

So how did you ID these anchors? You pull them out to check?

I saw them both drop.

I think you can learn quite a bit watching other boats anchor, particularly if you note their technique and then have a look to see how the anchor has correspondingly behaved underwater.

[noelex 77]

After the last great result for a Delta, this one was disappointing. 6m @ 6:1.

It was dropped in the same soft sand area. Where the powdery white sand had been exposed it was billowing up reducing visibility and making photography difficult.

Despite this very soft sand the Delta has not managed to bury well. It has merely scooped the sand along and piled it in front of the fluke. Much of the fluke is exposed. In this soft substrate this does not provide much holding power especially for an anchor like the Delta with a small convex blade.

The drag mark was much too long to photograph, but you can see even from the amount that I could fit into the frame that this anchor has dragged a long, long way. Note the drag mark is deeper than normal, with more sand heaped up to the side. This is due to the soft substrate.

As the previous result showed, in softer substrates the Delta can bury, but it did not manage to do so on this occasion. The long drag mark indicates that is was given reasonable force over some time.

On this occasion the anchor deserves the name "plow" (or plough) not just because of its blade shape











This was the start of the drag mark:

[kas_1611]

Noelex, do you think the seagrass that Delta picked up prevented it burying like the previous one and resulted in the long drag and poor set?

Keiron

[hoppy]

Originally Posted by kas_1611

Noelex, do you think the seagrass that Delta picked up prevented it burying like the previous one and resulted in the long drag and poor set?

Keiron

Based on the last photo, it looks like it got it's hairdo over a long drag.

I kind of wonder if the boat was reversing to fast for the delta to get an initial bite. I've always worked on that assumption when I reverse up. I idle in reverse and when I think i've stopped reversing, slowly increase the power.

[noelex 77]

Originally Posted by kas_1611

Noelex, do you think the seagrass that Delta picked up prevented it burying like the previous one and resulted in the long drag and poor set?

No, I don't think it made any practical difference. There was no live weed near the anchor. It was just strands of dead and broken weed that were floating around the bottom. These broken strands don't have any weed roots and are not very tough. They would cause very little impediment to the anchor burying. Of course if the Delta had set quickly it would not have picked up any of this debris anyway.

If an anchor drags it tends to pick up these thin broken bits of dead weed. Note how they accumulate and are dragged along with the anchor despite the convex blade.

[noelex 77]

This was a Rocna.

It was the same anchor as one of the earlier Rocna photos, but the skipper moved to a different part of the bay, so this is a different drop.

The set looked quite good from the surface, but diving down you can see a lot of the underside of the fluke.

The top of the fluke of any anchor is often covered only by a thin layer of sand or heaped up sand. From the surface this can make the fluke look a lot more buried than it actually is. If you can get a view from the seabed it is easy to see how much of the fluke is under the surface and this gives you a better idea of how well the anchor is doing.

I did not see the drop, but the setting mark is only a few inches, indicating very little force had been placed on the anchor at this stage. The anchor has started to set very quickly and with a bit more force I would be confident it would bury its fluke much better than this and level out.

[hoppy]

Same anchorage as yesterday. At lunch time the wind swung around 180 (back to how I started yesterday) and picked up to 15 knots and I have drifted 20 meters according to the GPS. I'm not really sure all of my movements since yesterday, but despite being 20m more east than the original position, the anchor is facing south west.

So I'm really not sure all of my movements as my was head was behind the instrument panel rewiring my radar power supply (also meant the instruments were off)

Facing west, I am east





So close to sand

[hoppy]

So I started up the motor and lifted the anchor until I could see that it was off the bottom. I let us drift watching the bottom and let the anchor down. After it settled I gave it 2000rpm and then pushed up to 2500 for "good luck"

Looking much better and set within it's own length




Here is a nice challenge for an anchor. This is an old Venetian port and I suspect that the pile of rocks could be dumped ballast

[noelex 77]

Another Delta.

This was outside the super soft sand area of this anchorage, but is still looks like nice soft sand.

Remarkably this Delta has set reasonably quickly. It is rare to see a convex plow anchor set this rapidly, but it does happen in softer substrates. You can see it has set OK, but there is still a lot of the fluke exposed.

There is one other interesting thing about this set. Anybody want to take stab at what that is? All the clues are in the photos.

[kas_1611]

Set at 45º to the direction when it was dropped looking at the chain marks

K

[noelex 77]

Originally Posted by kas_1611

Set at 45º to the direction when it was dropped looking at the chain marks

Thanks Kas. Spot on. Consider yourself admitted to the esteemed order of:



The marks in the sand tell a history of where the anchor and chain have been. As Kas has pointed out, the original chain position indicates the anchor was facing almost 45° from its final position. It was also further back.

The chain marks point to the end of the shank.

The red mark is the original chain orientation. The blue cross is original end of shank position. The yellow marks are the characteristic marks chain links make as they rotate around. Note they are not quite circular as drawn, indicating the anchor was moving back as they were created.

There is a wealth of information in the marks on the bottom. They are a bit like skid and scrape marks at a car accident scene. They can be used to recreate a history of what has happened.

[hoppy]

On the topic of swinging at anchor. The wind swung around about 120 degrees. So I went back down to see what happened. Looks like the anchor only got pulled around by 45 degrees

[dannc]

Originally Posted by Kenomac

I tried to inject a little art into the selfie adventure. Notice I'm topless in the spirit of the mermaid and smiling for the camera.
...
Ken

Originally Posted by Tayana42

Ken, sorry but I prefer the mermaid.

S/V B'Shert

Yes, I am afraid I have to agree.

When I see the Mermaid, I say, wow!, look at that diving technique.

Seeing, Merman Ken or Merman Hoppy, not so much.

Great pictures though.

Anyone else notice that the sand in Hoppy's photos looks almost pink? Really interesting color.

Later,
Dan