Angels

oldbilbo

oldbilbo

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....or 'chums'.

I'm not a great fan of such things, prefering to carry a spare anchor 'n chain, but for those whose belief systems work that way, perhaps one or more of these might prove attractive. They're unlikely to rust....


angel.jpg



Oh, Aldi.
 
I occasionally use a chum, but it's 20kg, and doesn't do a lot, so I'm not sure that a 7.5kg weight will do much for you. Mine doesn't rust either, cos it's made of lead.
 
...They're unlikely to rust....

We thought exactly that and bought a similar one in the USA (Walmart) it's rusted badly and quickly, most of the plastic's now split and peeling off.

The very best angel/chum we ever had was a circular 10kg weight from a weight lifting set, with two holes rota-broached through it at 90-degrees, one of which took the light recovery line and the other housed the pin of a big shackle to go over the chain. I think it was made of cast iron and never seemed to rust much at all, though you needed to keep the shackle pin threads loosened/greased to stop that sizing-up in the locker. It's on the bottom of Vlicho Bay somewhere - on a windy night I tossed it into the bottom of the dinghy to stop it flipping over; that idea didn't work.
 
When cruising on holdays - not weekend trundling around due to weight concerns - I carry a 7.5 kilo grapnel.

It's useful as an ' angel ' and smooth, unlikely to pick up other lines etc in it's folded state, and if one is in deep s**t in an emergency situation it should penetrate weed and give a TEMPORARY toe-hold on rocks.

The grapnel has proved very useful as a damper / shock absorber angel, for instance at Studland Bay when katabatic gusts had the boat over at 40 degrees + and self frightened fartless ! :)
 
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Never understood the point. Since I already carry loads of heavy chain I don't fancy carrying another large finger crunching block of metal. If the anchorage requires the scope to be shortened then simply shackle a loop of chain. This will give you a far heavier chum than you would wish to lift over the bow roller, is fully adjustable and requires only the addition of a 100g shackle. It is far easier to launch and recover also.
 
A chum-angel can be useful with warp. On a previous boat we had a few metres of chain and the rest warp which wound itself round the keel on a couple of occasions on the change of tide before I got into the habit of lowering a weight a couple of metres down.
 
pmagowan said:
Never understood the point. Since I already carry loads of heavy chain I don't fancy carrying another large finger crunching block of metal. If the anchorage requires the scope to be shortened then simply shackle a loop of chain. This will give you a far heavier chum than you would wish to lift over the bow roller, is fully adjustable and requires only the addition of a 100g shackle. It is far easier to launch and recover also.
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I do something very similar by letting a lot of chain out after I've secured it with a snubber. The loop can hang down 5 or 6 metres, giving at least 10 metres weight of chain. The downside with my method compared to yours is that I need to release more snubber to get the chain further down the rode.
 
pmagowan said:
Never understood the point. Since I already carry loads of heavy chain I don't fancy carrying another large finger crunching block of metal. If the anchorage requires the scope to be shortened then simply shackle a loop of chain. This will give you a far heavier chum than you would wish to lift over the bow roller, is fully adjustable and requires only the addition of a 100g shackle. It is far easier to launch and recover also.
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That may be OK - I'd suggest probably not - on a heavyweight blue water cruiser, but the weight penalty of carrying around a load of chain on a weekend / sometimes on holidays across the Channel cruiser / racer would be crippling in performance terms.
 
Seajet said:
That may be OK - I'd suggest probably not - on a heavyweight blue water cruiser, but the weight penalty of carrying around a load of chain on a weekend / sometimes on holidays across the Channel cruiser / racer would be crippling in performance terms.
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How much chain do you need? You need enough to have a reasonable scope. If you are in a tight anchorage then you reduce your scope and thus have 'spare chain' to use as a chum. If you routinely carry a chum then all you need to do is routinely carry the same weight extra in chain. The extra chain is simply a better, more convenient chum. I have never needed all my chain plus a chum and don't expect I ever will. Of course if you carried a rope rode then you could simply have a small length of chain of similar weight which would actually make your anchoring better every time rather than only on the odd occasion you bothered trying to lug a chum over the bow.
 
pmagowan said:
Never understood the point. Since I already carry loads of heavy chain I don't fancy carrying another large finger crunching block of metal. If the anchorage requires the scope to be shortened then simply shackle a loop of chain. This will give you a far heavier chum than you would wish to lift over the bow roller, is fully adjustable and requires only the addition of a 100g shackle. It is far easier to launch and recover also.
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I'm inclined to agree. I have seen my 100 metres of 10mm chain lift in a moderate blow. How much does that weight ... possibly 250 kg? Any kind of angel would be as much use as a gnat on an elephant's back, unless you are using rope rode I guess.

Richard
 
My rode is 10 metres of 8 mm chain plus 100 metres of 14 mm octoplait nylon. My boat is rather fine forward and I prefer not to carry a lot of weight there. In situations like mine I believe that the best holding power is given by devoting most of the available mass to the anchor and only having a boat's length or so of chain to lie on the bottom and avoid chaffing the rope. With a setup like this an angel is helpful in two ways 1) it makes the boat lie more steadily and lessens the tendency to veer around and 2) if not lowered too far down the rode such that it bottoms it makes the rode hang vertically down from the bow roller so that it can't foul the keel(s) or rudder if the yacht drifts over her anchor at the turn of the tide.

Incidentally: is it called an angel because it's sent down from on high?
 
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I swear by my angel a 10kg lump of lead cast by me and carried on numerous boats over the years using an all chain rode, definitely works for me on the wild and windy west coast of Ireland. Incidentally one dosen't always have the option of letting out more chain, and whats so difficult in clipping it over the chain on a very large snap shackle and easing it down on a handy length of warp?
 
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