length of anchor rode

[Bosun Higgs]

Had two lengths of chain in the garage - one of 40m and one of 50m. Have joined them together thanks to SkipperStu and his joining link. Now getting cold feet about that weight of chain in the bow of my 36 footer and wondering if 90m is simply OTT.

What do you think?

 

[doug748]

Is it 8mm or perhaps 9.5?

No matter really. I think I would have been happy with 50m in the first instance but that is me.
However having gone to the trouble of joining it I would certainly use it for a season and see what I felt. Folk post on here with 120mts of the stuff on less buoyant hulls than yours, so it is not going to be a huge problem - I guess if you were a racer you would have gone for rope anyway.
It is easy enough to get rid of if you feel you are doing too much pecking at headseas. or the trim feels unduly affected.

 

[photodog]

90m...... tempting.... but... OTT I suspect...


70m... I could go for that.....



Are you a scheel or deep?

 

[snowleopard]

I have 110m of rode (mostly rope) and have never had much more than half of it out of the locker. If you're planning to anchor around the Channel Islands maybe but most places 50m will be enough.

 

[vyv_cox]

In North Wales/Liverpool Bay with large tides but many good anchorages I never needed more than 50 metres of chain. Only when we reached Corsica and Sardinia did we feel the need for more and took the opportunity to dump what we had with some dodgy C-links for 60 metres all in one length. This has been sufficient, although when underestimating our distance from the wall when stern-to berthing we have occasionally run out and had to start again. We are told that even more may be needed in Turkey.

 

[Mark-1]

Had two lengths of chain in the garage - one of 40m and one of 50m. Have joined them together thanks to SkipperStu and his joining link. Now getting cold feet about that weight of chain in the bow of my 36 footer and wondering if 90m is simply OTT.

What do you think?

I subscribe to the view that you can never have too much ground tackle, and that ground tackle is more useful on the sea bed than on your garage floor.

So if you buy that logic it all comes down to how the extra weight affects your boat at sea. I think you'll have to suck that and see.

 

[craigsmith]

Had two lengths of chain in the garage - one of 40m and one of 50m. Have joined them together thanks to SkipperStu and his joining link. Now getting cold feet about that weight of chain in the bow of my 36 footer and wondering if 90m is simply OTT.

What do you think?

It depends entirely on where you're wanting to sail. We come to the conclusion that 100 m is about the maximum ever needed by any cruising boat anywhere on the planet, the deeper bits being mostly in the South Pacific and high latitudes. For the UK as Vyv implies it's hard to imagine you needing more than half that. For farther afield then - it depends.

 

[mattonthesea]

Bosun

if you are still sailing in the Bristol Channel then I envy you your 90m Given a fast, super-spring tide, a rise of over 12m, and a below keel safety margin of at least 3m to deal with the vagueries of the channel then, with a 4:1 ratio you'd be on 60m. Me? I'd want a 6:1 ratio to cope with it! That's 90m

The downside: day 1 of my Atlantic adventure is still etched in my memory when we pulled up 40m by hand out side Porlock Weir. Off Dominica last month it was a doddle

 

[Sybarite]

Had two lengths of chain in the garage - one of 40m and one of 50m. Have joined them together thanks to SkipperStu and his joining link. Now getting cold feet about that weight of chain in the bow of my 36 footer and wondering if 90m is simply OTT.

What do you think?

On my 31 footer (4 tons) I have 20m chain attached to 20m nylon rope. This has been adequate for me. On the one or two times I dragged I don't think having more chain out would have helped.

With 50 metres of chain you can moor in 10 metres of water. Would you normally want to be in deeper? It's a concern for me because I don't have a windlass.

 

[Bosun Higgs]

Bosun

if you are still sailing in the Bristol Channel then I envy you your 90m Given a fast, super-spring tide, a rise of over 12m, and a below keel safety margin of at least 3m to deal with the vagueries of the channel then, with a 4:1 ratio you'd be on 60m. Me? I'd want a 6:1 ratio to cope with it! That's 90m

The downside: day 1 of my Atlantic adventure is still etched in my memory when we pulled up 40m by hand out side Porlock Weir. Off Dominica last month it was a doddle

That is the issue matt - I am still based in the Bristol channel and a 10m range is fairly common here. Add in 2m draft and 1m safety margin, and on 3: 1 you need 40m of rode. But thats an uncommon event and in any case I have more than twice that much.

I think based on the above comments I will cut it back to 60m.