Ground Tackle & Anchoring Safely…Part 2

At anchor with borrowed ROCNA 33

If you read the first post on ground tackle and anchoring safely you won’t be surprised to know that since buying Maple we have significantly upgraded our anchoring system and our confidence in the system.

As we quickly learned upgrading ground tackle can be complicated and confusing.  There are many pieces of the system that must be considered and decisions to be made.  We’ll take a look at our new anchoring system moving from the boat to the actual anchor and outline the choices we made and why.

1)     The bitter end.  This is the point where the anchor rode (chain or rope) connects to the boat.  When we got Maple the chain was shackled to the attachment point (a well bedded u bolt) with a rusty and undersized shackle.  This was cut off.  Instead I opted to splice a 6-meter section of 16mm 8 braid line to the attachment point.  This was also spliced to our new chain.  The rope is the right size to run though our gypsy so in the unlikely event that we need to drop the anchor chain and flee an unsafe anchorage we can run the chain out and cut the line without having to climb deep into the anchor locker.

In hindsight I’m thinking I may have been better off using a much longer piece of line, which would give me additional anchor rode for those really deep anchorages, but it would probably end up being overkill so I’m not going to change it now.

2)     The windlass.  This is the hardest working part of the system.  Our windlass is a 5 year old Quick Aleph 1000.  It’s basically a 1000-watt electric motor and gearbox that is tasked with lowering and raising the anchor and chain.  It is expected to do this something in the range of 200 times a year in depths from 3-20 meters with minimal maintenance.  In order to do this properly, the windlass relies on a chain gypsy, which grips the chain and pulls it in/out of the chain locker.  Of course the gypsy is specific for the chain size being used.  We were increasing our chain size so we had to shell out for a new gypsy.  Fortunately, they are still being manufactured and one was available and easily installed.

I should probably try to sell the smaller size gypsy I took off.  If you know of someone with a Quick Antares or Aleph windlass that may need an 8mm chain gypsy feel free to put us in touch.  I’ll let it go way cheaper than new.

3)     The chain.  Ahhh – the simple part.  If that were what you were thinking you would be wrong.  As one of my good friends back in Canada can attest you can spend an entire career learning about chain.  It turns out that there are any number of variables to consider, wire size, link size, composition, strength, certifications and on and on.  Maple had 40 meters of 8mm (that’s the wire size) G3 (strength rating) chain.  I wanted heavier, stronger stuff to go around the world, not to mention a longer length.  We opted for 100 meters of 10mm G3 galvanized steel chain.  We could have gone stronger with G4 chain but it would probably have been overkill.  We could have opted for stainless chain but it is more brittle and when corrosion does set in it can be hard to see.  The chain we have is oversized for the boat and has a safe working load of 2500kg and a breaking strength of 5000kg.  With 100 meters of it we can anchor safely in depths up to 20 meters.  If we need more, we can add some rope to the bitter end of the chain (see above).

4)     Chain to anchor connection.  To swivel or not to swivel?  That is the question.  An anchor swivel allows the chain to swivel around the anchor when the boat turns in an anchorage.  Unfortunately, the swivel is often a weak link in this critical grouping of hardware.  There have been many instances of swivels catching on an anchor and breaking as the side loads exceed what they can handle.  The end result is a boat that drifts free with potentially catastrophic results.  While there is no decisive answer to the question of whether or not to use a swivel we decided not to – removing a potential weak link is good enough reason for me.  Instead we have attached our anchor to the chain using a 7/16” load tested Crosby galvanized steel shackle. 

Our new ROCNA 33

5)     The hook.  The last component of our ground tackle and probably the one you thought of first when you started reading this is the anchor.  You’ll recall we had a small (25kg) Delta anchor.  This was state of the art in the 70’s but it’s a plow style anchor and as you can imagine was prone to plowing the sea bottom rather than holding.  We knew we wanted a new generation anchor of the scoop or spade type. These anchors are known for digging their tip into the bottom and scooping the earth – the harder they are pulled the deeper they dig.  Testing done on land (granted its not the most scientific) proves that any of the top contenders outperform the Delta or CQRs that were popular in the past.  We chose ROCNA, partly because it’s owned by a Canadian Company but mostly because we have never heard a bad review.  We weren’t sure what size to get but were able to borrow a friend’s Rocna 33 (33kg) for a weekend and confirmed it fit our bow roller so that’s the size we got.  It is 1 size bigger than recommended by Rocna (and their sizing charts are conservative compared to others) and fits the boat well.  I don’t think we could have fit a 40 but it’s a moot point.  With what this cost it’s here to stay. 

ROCNA 33 fit in Leopard 384

We’ve now had this new ground tackle fit out for 500 NM of cruising and more than 60 nights where we’ve relied on it to keep us safe.  The anchor has set well every time and exceeded the performance we were used to from the Delta.  With the added weight of the larger chain and the added length we are confident and comfortable anchoring in deeper water when needed.  Over all, we sleep better in all conditions knowing we have a reliable anchoring system holding us in place. 

Ground Tackle & Anchoring Safely

If you spend any time reading the sailing community forums you’ll quickly come to realize that there are many topics, which seem to polarize the audience of contributors (or perhaps those sensible enough to avoid trying to convince others just stay out of it).  One of the most contentious topics is ground tackle – this is also one of those areas where it doesn’t matter who is right – what matters is what works for you and what you trust to protect your home. 

The only question that matters is; “do you trust your ground tackle?”

We didn’t, which was a problem. 

In the period between July 2015 and January 2016 we cruised and anchored with the ground tackle that had been in place on our boat when we bought her.  As you may have read on the “Boat” page, Maple is an ex-charter catamaran from the Sunsail fleet.  When we bought her we were told that she had 50 meters of chain on board which was connected to a 35kg  25kg Delta plow anchor.  We never dragged, but we were never really trusted our ground tackle.  There were a couple of things that made us feel this way.

1)   The Delta very rarely set in the first try.  We would carefully drop enough anchor and chain to reach the bottom based on our depth sounder and an eyeball measurement of chain (it was not marked).  We would then slowly back up, laying out more chain until we thought we had reached a 5:1 scope, at which time we would lock the chain off and reverse on our anchor.  Mostly this resulted in the anchor dragging along the bottom so we’d bring it up and try again.  On the 3^rd or 4^th try it would usually stick.

To be fair, we were often anchoring on weedy bottoms which can be hard for any anchor to penetrate, but we didn’t see many others struggling as much.  Perhaps they were not being careful about their anchoring, but regardless of the reason, the end result for us was a lack of trust in our hook.

2)   The chain seemed under-sized.  The boat came with 8mm G3 chain, but it seemed rather small for the boat.  Chances are the boat left the manufacturer with an 8mm gypsy on the windlass which is what determined the chain size.  If this was the case, I didn’t have any real reason to believe that it wasn’t big enough but it felt smaller than it should be.

3)   In Italy I had a chance to measure the chain and attempt to mark it – in doing this I made the discovery that we did not have 50M of chain, we had a mere 40M, including the length that extended into the chain locker where it attached to the boat.  Assuming we continued to put out 5:1 scope we would be limited to anchoring in 8M or less and there aren’t many anchorages with that kind of depth in Greece or Turkey.  The end result is our ground tackle would have us putting out less than ideal scope making us less secure than we’d like.  This is probably the best (and main reason) we didn’t really trust our ground tackle.

4)   The ground tackle was not really set up properly. 

The bitter end of the chain was shackled to the boat and the shackle was undersized and rusted shu t.  Not only would it not hold if a load was placed on it, we would struggle to cut it free if we had to leave an anchorage in a hurry.

The shackle holding the anchor to the chain was undersized and rusted.  This was the weakest link in our ground tackle and meant that the working strength of the entire system was even less than the strength of the 8mm chain that I already felt was under sized.

No – it was a given that we would be getting new ground tackle.  Anchors and chain are an expensive proposition, but well worth the expense given the importance of being trusting your vessel to stay put when it is most vulnerable.