Zimmerman chain

[ironworker]

Anybody used a Zimmerman chain before this is a 6 foot length of chain bolted to the stem right at the base of the bobstay on my steel boat I'm building.AFter you put the anchor out and enough chain you hook the end of this short chain into the anchor chain and then pay out six to eight more feet of anchor chain until the weight of the boat comes onto the short Zimmerman chain.THat way the boat rides from a point at the base of the stem rather than from a point at the top IF the Zimmerman breaks the boat comes back at the anchor chain.

[estarzinger]

I have never seen that done with a chain, but it used to be common to have a nylon snubber attached/used that way.

[ironworker]

Gerry trobridge wrote about using one on the white seal and said it worked real well .Im beefing up my stem and I'm going to try it

[Jim Cate]

Ironman, do think a bit about this system. It is indeed good to get the point of attachment down low, for it effectively increases your scope when anchored. But having no snubber is a bad deal with a chain rode... in a bit of wind and sea, as the chain comes taut it will jerk the hell out of your boat,putting a big shock load on all the components from anchor to the attachment point on the bow.

On our previous boat we had such an attachment point, and had a permanently mounted nylon snubber shackled on to it. Worked well, zero chafe, less noise, better angles. The down side is that if you need to veer more chain, you have to shorten up on the rode until you can release the chain hook, and that can be difficult under conditions where you might feel the need for more chain out. Further, should the chain hook fall off whilst easing out the last bit, it is hard to recover the now hanging straight down snubber, and since you can't keep some tension on the snubber during that process, falling off is more likely.

All in all, we didn't chose to reproduce that system in our current vessel.

Cheers,

Jim

[ironworker]

Thanks Jim that makes a lot of sense.happy new year