Windlass Anchoring

Ya, that chain was definitely past it’s time, in the photo it’s actually cut already which makes it look more sketchy but not need to defend that lol.
The big Crosby is pretty beefy and realize it’s only as good as the weakest link put in there just to test things out needed a big one to fit over the rope connection and ya don’t think the red pin fits through the chain link. I gave a bunch of different shackles and Crosby connects so gonna rearrange a few things.
I can’t remember what knot I used at the time but it’s definitely not a proper splice. Going to redo that rope connection most likely.
 
Man I really should have bought Rain city’s metal working gear before buying and tackling this anchor lol spent most of the day doing the best I could with the materials and tools around my house today. Think I’ve got a working anchor mount now for the rocna. Drilling stainless steel was a *****.
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dmurph said:
Man I really should have bought Rain city’s metal working gear before buying and tackling this anchor lol spent most of the day doing the best I could with the materials and tools around my house today. Think I’ve got a working anchor mount now for the rocna. Drilling stainless steel was a *****.
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Nice work, ya without a drill press its nasty to drill stainless at home. If I go with that fancy rocna specific roller I gotta pop a hole in it too, that's definitely not happening at the house.
 
2FA78ECD-4F4F-4160-8E4B-F828754C9266.jpeg Ya drilling the holes into the existing stainless roller mount was the toughest part of the job, really slowed things down. Cutting the new brackets/ supports wasn’t bad as it was thick aluminum, also had to cut down the 4 stainless bolts which went pretty good. Quite a bit of time brainstorming different configurations with the random stuff I had lying around. Spent most of a day on it, should have bought the rocna special mont lol I’m sure that would have meant drilling new mounting holes into the pulpit though and then filling and avoiding the old ones, that was more my concern as opposed to cost. Oh the anchor drilled out fairly easy also but was a little tricky to line up
 
4C230A95-70CB-4F59-B38E-9D1035EAE99D.jpeg E04E03C8-3610-46A9-BEA6-23320301E765.jpeg 5568B462-13A4-459A-8C7E-D7B137FEBD61.jpeg 878963B2-922B-4D7E-B579-53F59CBDD190.jpeg Pretty much completed the anchor mount, used some thick rubber and channeled in the anchor shank where it sits on the pulpit. Don’t worry @Raincity although I’ve completely stolen your thread, I’m slowly working towards making your original question valid for myself lol
 
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Honestly that pin was just on the anchor roller mount. My old Danforth slid underneath the pin. The new anchor would not and I didn’t want to have the pin just dangling or gave to cut it off. It’s spring loaded and kinda twists and locks in place. I drilled out the new anchor, it locks it in place pretty good.
 
It’s to protect against accidental launch or being jarred lose if a big wave came over the bow. I just use a rope with a clip as mine does not have the pin. Larger boats have chain locks between windlass and anchor
 
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Why a pin? I’m thinking anybody with a Lewmar windlass that has the free-fall option should have either a retaining pin in the anchor nest, or have the anchor clipped by a carabiner on a short cord fixed to a bow cleat, or both. I have both.

I decided to have double coverage after reading about a harrowing ordeal on THT—-a guy didn’t have his anchor pinned, hit a wave at 20 knots, the anchor self-deployed, pulling 200 feet of chain with it , all this with the boat at speed. Miraculous to relate, he didn’t spin up the chain into his outboard , or worse, have that happen in shallow water and have the anchor grab a rock or stick in the mud.



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Well I went out and gave this a shot the other day. I got two different types of systems for snubbers/safeties. One is a flat plate with two shackles that has two ropes one to each cleat. The other is just a small rope sent over the roller with a chain hook. Screenshot_20200519-054304_Chrome.jpg
Both seem to work fine and are relatively easy to deploy.

Now my issues came when I tried to anchor in 220' of water in what seemed to be a relatively calm day. I anchored on a hill top surrounded by my prawn traps. The chain has marking but for the life of me I couldn't figure out what they meant. Seemed like some came faster than others. Is there a standard color coding system for this? I remember the previous owner had said there was 200' or 250' of chain so I just figured I'd drop it all out so I could see my rope splice and make sure I had some kind of scope but wasn't looking to set it up for the night or anything. After buying these hooks I now realised that I'd be tying a knot in this situation anyways. Took a 1/2" dock line and gave it a few loops on the rode and let her go over the roller and tied to the post. Seemed to hold fine. So after setting up rods and starting the bbq we sat down to enjoy what felt like the perfect weather. Then the breeze started. That quickly put us right beside one of our traps and wouldn't you know we snagged the line. Brought the gear up, luckily the hook slid up the line nicely or that could have been worse. By that time the wind picked up even more. The anchor was holding just fine actually. I decided that to avoid the traps I would come up a little on the windlass to avoid swinging into the traps again. 20' would do it. So I went out onto the bow and used the foot controls and that's when I learned the windlass won't pull the rope without weight on it. So now I'm struggling to pull up enough slack on the snubber line to get it uncleated which was REALLY hard. That finally let and now the windlass is holding the boat in a steady 15 mile an hour wind. Starts raining, joy. So now panicked that I'm going to damage the windlass I start up the kicker and motor us ahead to take some pressure off, the rest of the fishing gear gets tangled in the process. So now my buddies trying to deal with the gear and I'm in the boat trying to winch up the anchor while driving to keep it slack but the windlass jams. Seems as though the rope doesn't feed into the hole very nicely and is binding. So now I'm back out on the bow with a stick using the foot controls trying to yell at my buddy to keep the boat turned in the right direction to maintain the slack. And here we are coming up on the traps again. Drop everything jump inside and motor a couple hundreds yards up with everything still dangling. One rod is officially tangled in the mains now so its abandoned. This repeats a couple more times as for the life of me I can't figure out a good way to get the line to not bind. AH HA! I tell my buddy to jump into the v-berth and open the anchor locker, first time looking in there since the survey. I tell him to keep pulling down on the rope as I winch it up, works great. Finally the chain comes over the roller and yay we're safe. Nope. Now we're drifting FAST and I have 200 or so feet of chain to get up. About half way up I jump to the back again and use the kicker to drive us out into the middle to avoid our traps altogether. All clear? Nope because now as I'm winching the chain in that too starts to bind. Seems as though when you pay out that much line there is a lot of adjusting the line in the locker to avoid mountains of chain reaching the top and yet again binding every 20 feet. So buddies back in the locker minding the chain now. Anchor comes over the roller and hooray! We did it. Cut the last line and let the $25 jig fall to the bottom to avoid getting wet and off we go. Click click click. Battery is dead on the port side. Close my eyes, pray to god, give the starboard a turn and she fires up. Thank ****. What a GD cluster.

Anyone else have an issue with rope feeding into the locker properly? Is there a solution?
 
Thanks for sharing, RC. We all have our bad experiences to share. Which is why we do share. Because when it comes to boats and weather - it can all go sideways way too quick. And any day - it could be any one of us in the same predicament. So... sharing may help someone before they get into the exact same predicament.

At least it was still daylight and not 2pm in the morning in a SE storm. And you had friends around to help. And now you have the opportunity to fix it. And it does illustrate the need to do a short, local shakedown cruise with new equipment to work the bugs out before committing to being in the middle of no wheres and no easy chance to rectify issues. So...

Not sure about your rope issue. Nylon usually feeds nicely. Is the rope/chain union too wide?

As far as the markings go - this is the standard big ship chain markings:
chain markings.jpg
PS - Shot: 15 fathoms (90 feet).
 
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Thanks for sharing, definitely we are always learning out there and anyone who thinks they have anything over the seas is going to be surely disappointed. 220' wow that's deep for sure.

When I pounded up the straits at my usual 18 knots come hell or high water yesterday I noticed my shiny new rocna edging out of the seat even though theres a line on it. Drag loosened off but no way I'm going up front in weather like that solo unless it's gone in.

I need a better safety line clearly and I need to service my winch.
 
ab1752 said:
Thanks for sharing, definitely we are always learning out there and anyone who thinks they have anything over the seas is going to be surely disappointed. 220' wow that's deep for sure.

When I pounded up the straits at my usual 18 knots come hell or high water yesterday I noticed my shiny new rocna edging out of the seat even though theres a line on it. Drag loosened off but no way I'm going up front in weather like that solo unless it's gone in.

I need a better safety line clearly and I need to service my winch.
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Do you have issues with anything binding?
 
I have 100ft chain. Piles up in the locker and binds and has to be pushed over. Not the best. Also if it twists lots I have to scope out a bit.

Was thinking about putting a small hatch up there to access the locker. From the helm I can go in the cuddy and move it but still not the best. I dont anchor often at all so not worth a ton of work.
 
32Knots said:
I have 100ft chain. Piles up in the locker and binds and has to be pushed over. Not the best. Also if it twists lots I have to scope out a bit.

Was thinking about putting a small hatch up there to access the locker. From the helm I can go in the cuddy and move it but still not the best. I dont anchor often at all so not worth a ton of work.
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Hatch at the bow is a good idea actually.
 
Hey Rain City—-not sure how big your boat is or why you use so much chain but I’m sure you have your reasons. But here’s a quick and dirty way to deal with slack rode line and a gypsy that doesn’t want to grab it, or rode line that isn’t stacking properly in your anchor locker....

I have two tie-down points for my anchor when it’s in the nest—-the pin that goes through the anchor and a short cord with a carabiner attached that’s attached to a bow cleat with the carabiner clipped to the anchor shackle

I mention that because that cord serves two purposes—-yes, it’s back-up to the pin to hold the anchor in place but more importantly, when I’m in a sketchy situation and need to get rode back into the boat FAST or need to shorten the scope and don’t want to use power on the Lemar, I take that cord, pull open the spring-loaded fairlead arm that applies pressure against the gypsy, put the cord around its base, then step on the carabiner. That move keeps the spring-loaded fairlead arm up and allows me to hand-haul the rode line up and and over the roller and feed it down into the anchor locker all in the same movement.

I got pretty good at that maneuver this summer , so good that every time I needed to haul the anchor, I started hand-hauling as much rode into the boat as I could, then once I got to the chain, dropped the link into the gypsy teeth and used power for the remaining chain scope and anchor. The main reason: I found that occasionally when hauling under power, the knot between the brait and the chain would get to the gypsy and fail to clear it (probably because it’s not tapered enough) The gypsy teeth spun on the knot and beat the crap out of the splice so to prevent that, I started using the hand-haul method mentioned above, then once past the rode/chain splice, I dropped the chain into the gypsy teeth and used power after that

Also, I keep a plastic tub on the deck. If I have to hand-haul rode in a hurry to take out slack, I just throw the coils in the basket and re-fasten the snubber and deal with getting the rode back into the anchor locker later

Glad you survived that ordeal—-we’ve all had those moments. You were lucky you had another set of hands with you!
 
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As others have said, thanks for sharing (there is a reason anchoring is called the cruisers TV - and yes, we ALL eventually produce content!) and good on you for gettin out and learning.
A couple minor comments-
- the chain piling up in the locker is one of those dirty little secrets that an amazingly large portion of boats have - even on $$$ production cruisers - the ability to have a deep enough locker to avoid it is quite rare - there are all kinds of "solutions" that depend on the exact setup - our locker is open at the top and I have to reach in and knock down the pile every 10' or so - other solutions include a stick (if your hawse pipe is big enough) and unfortunately (as you found out) if the access is from the interior, it turns into a 2 person job with one inside knocking it down - no easy solution.
- The dead battery probably tells you exactly which one the windlass is wired to - that is going to be the biggest draw on the whole boat (which is why some people, me include chose to wire it to a start battery as opposed to a house) - but it also illustrates one other point - never trade one form of safety for another until you are ready - i.e don't turn off the main motor until you are safely anchored, and even more importantly, don't bring up the anchor (relative safety) until you have a motor running.
Finally, on the marking of the chain - I'm of the opinion that simpler is better - i.e some people have fancy colour codes for each 5' - and you end up needing a laminated sheet to remember the code - I go on the "horeshoes and hand grenades" philosophy - i.e if you calculate you need 79' of scope, throw out 100 - so I just lay the chain out on the dock and spray paint every 25' red - simple, easy to ready, and only needs re-painting every few years.
 
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