Anchor Chain Marking

[GHA]

Love It- Twice around the M25 on a Monday morning would solve a lot of problems

Indeed
Dragging in miles is actually much more effective than dragging in kilometres
You might want to consider a longer time span for the M25 on a Monday morning though....

 

[rogerthebodger]

Indeed
Dragging in miles is actually much more effective than dragging in kilometres
You might want to consider a longer time span for the M25 on a Monday morning though....

Kilometers for metric chain miles for imperial chain.

I didn't know the M25 was considered a dirt road, you must have lots of potholes then.

 

[Robin]

Yeah well if you're only anchoring in a puddle, it's fine.

I much prefer deeper but the waters we are in these days, Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway/Bahamas are called 'skinny' 'cos they are not very deep. A bit more depth would have allowed me to bring my last UK 7ft draught boat here or buy another similar, but deep keels and tall masts do not hack it in these parts, hence we have a 5.2 ft winged keel to avoid needing to fit wheels on the bottom. However I used the power down technique all the time, when we were back in UK and French waters, for 25 years, in depths up to 30ft mostly, on all chain, prior to then we had no electric windlass and the manual one we had on one boat seized solid from lack of use.. .

 

[NormanS]

Norman: Some windlasses can only lower by reversing the motor; there is no free fall option. Otherwise, you are obviously correct.
.

Obviously, I'll take your word for that, but I find it astonishing. I would certainly not have an anchor windlass which could not allow free fall. Equally, I would not have a windlass which did not have the means for manual recovery.

I now have a Lofrans Tigres, with a clutch, and my previous boat had a hydraulic windlass, which had no ability to power out. With it, dropping the anchor was exactly the same procedure as with a ship. Let it go, and control with the brake. It had a system for manual recovery, but with 16mm chain, and a 140 lb anchor, it would have been a tad slow and laborious.

 

[Jeva]

Since posting the original question, I've had a lot of interesting responses - Thank you all.
Just on a final point about marking the chain: I asked the question of a surveyor I met today and he suggested marking not in Metres but in 'boat lengths' - seems like a good idea to me, since scope is measured in BL's not meters. There you go, we live and learn.

 

[Tranona]

Since posting the original question, I've had a lot of interesting responses - Thank you all.
Just on a final point about marking the chain: I asked the question of a surveyor I met today and he suggested marking not in Metres but in 'boat lengths' - seems like a good idea to me, since scope is measured in BL's not meters. There you go, we live and learn.

Not sure about that story. Surely scope is a function of depth of water which on all modern charts and instruments is in metres? Only relevance of boat size is distance from bow roller to water.

 

[NormanS]

Since posting the original question, I've had a lot of interesting responses - Thank you all.
Just on a final point about marking the chain: I asked the question of a surveyor I met today and he suggested marking not in Metres but in 'boat lengths' - seems like a good idea to me, since scope is measured in BL's not meters. There you go, we live and learn.

Change your surveyor. Since when was scope a function of boat length?

 

[Jeva]

No that was my cock up. Put it down to age or an addled brain. Whoops.

 

[Russ the Diver]

I do the same...... But marking every 5m and using proper anchor chain markers. Guess I'm a 5:1 man rather than a 3:1

Richard

+1 I use the traffic light sequence Red, Yellow and Blue!!!!

 

[NormanS]

+1 I use the traffic light sequence Red, Yellow and Blue!!!!

Ooh aar Do traffic lights be different in Devon?