Preventing a heap of chain in the anchor locker

Traffic cone. Been there done that. I now have 75m of 10mm chain sitting on top of a squashed flat cone. It worked very well at first but after about 30 deployments it started to flatten out. I might try it again with builders foam inside.
 
Dockhead said:
If you don't have access to your chain locker from the deck, this is a significant design flaw IMHO.
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Perfectly standard on older boats. Usually just a flat foredeck with one of these and some chocks to lash the anchor down onto.

chain+pipe.JPG


Pete
 
Thanks again to all. There's definitely not enough room to get a rod of any size down the hole and we normally sail with just two of us, so small children in the forepeak are not an option. Couldn't find the anchorboy on the svb website, but will try and improvise something.

I'm currently being berated by girlfriend for not taking the opportunity in the early hours of sunday morning to relieve a young man staggering past us from the direction of UCL of his orange and white conical headgear which was almost certainly the property of camden council.
 
I made a very budget version of the lofrans device. I attached a short section of PVC tube to the underside of the deck beneath the hawse hole with a lanyard so that chain going down the hawse fed in to the the PVC pipe. I attached a cord to the bottom end of the PVC pipe and ran it out through my second hawse hole. As I weigh anchor, I give an occaisional tug to the cord and the chain drops off the top of the pile and spreads out. If you don't have a second hawse hole, then run the cord back round a block, so that it can come up through through the same hawse hole as the chain going down.
 
pyrojames said:
I made a very budget version of the lofrans device. I attached a short section of PVC tube to the underside of the deck beneath the hawse hole with a lanyard so that chain going down the hawse fed in to the the PVC pipe. I attached a cord to the bottom end of the PVC pipe and ran it out through my second hawse hole. As I weigh anchor, I give an occaisional tug to the cord and the chain drops off the top of the pile and spreads out. If you don't have a second hawse hole, then run the cord back round a block, so that it can come up through through the same hawse hole as the chain going down.
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I consider the problem of chain piling up a major problem and I find myself often thinking about possible solutions.
One of the idea I had is very similar to the one you describe, only it is automatized: in particular I was thinking of fitting two 12V windshield wiper motors displaced at 90 degrees with arms connected to the pipe to produce the "tug" you mention.
It will cost less than, say, 50 Euro; do you have any comment before I start actually making it? :)
Browsing through e-bay I even found that they sell whole electric window lifter devices for cars that could be fitted for the purpose.

Daniel
 
I'd probably just go for the one. Some of them are cable drives, so you could mount the motor remotely and have the cable drive the pipe backwards and forwards.. I like that idea! I might have to copy it. :)
 
question: how would you do with the PVC pipe when *dropping* the ancor ?

I tried putting a PVC pipe in my locker, just under the gypsy, but I had to split it laterally in order to be able to take the chain out of the pipe while dropping anchor, otherwise it would jam.
Once the pipe is split, it lasts a couple of times and has to be replaced :sad:
 
prv said:
Perfectly standard on older boats. Usually just a flat foredeck with one of these and some chocks to lash the anchor down onto.

chain+pipe.JPG


Pete
Click to expand...

Yes, I wouldn't have called it a design flaw if I had not had personal experience with it :)

My previous boat looked just like that. The chain locker was basically in the forepeak, separated by a non-watertight, non-stenchtight door. Besides the flaking problem, on my old boat there was the problem of the smell of stinky mud from the chain permeating the interior. I became quite fastidious about washing the chain as it came on board -- fitted a pump and hose specially for the purpose.
 
I was thinking of a 2 inch 45 degree elbow and a short length of 2 inch pipe. Connected to a windscreen wiper motor that runs when the windlass is retrieving chain it could oscillate back and forth through about 45 degrees.

Instead I'm going to move my winch forward 250mm to the point where the drop off the gypsey is doubled so that even when the chain piles I still get a 400mm drop.
 
Roberto said:
question: how would you do with the PVC pipe when *dropping* the ancor ?

I tried putting a PVC pipe in my locker, just under the gypsy, but I had to split it laterally in order to be able to take the chain out of the pipe while dropping anchor, otherwise it would jam.
Once the pipe is split, it lasts a couple of times and has to be replaced :sad:
Click to expand...

I was actually thinking about a short length of pipe that should not add problems when lowering the anchor.
What worries me more is that if you need to displace the chain horizontally by a relevant distance you probably cannot rely on pipe elasticity.
A possible solution could be to fix a piece of properly curved pipe to a large ball bearing coaxial with the chain output opening under the gipsy.
Similar to the Lofrans device but in their case there is just a plain teflon/stainless-steel bearing.

Daniel
 
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