Which anchor chain for 24 foot, 2600 lb boat

slawosz

slawosz

Well-Known Member
Joined
26 Sep 2018
Messages
625
Location
London
Visit site
Hi,
I need to buy anchor chain for my 24 foot Achilles 24. I already got 30 meters of nylon 12 mm rope, and thinking about getting 15 or 20 meters of 6 mm chain. My main sailing area is River Blackwater, with occasional short day cruises (Felixstowe, Ramsgate). Is it good or I should change something?
 
Seems OK, but I'd go for 30m of chain, and think about ways to use mooring lines and sheets to extend the anchor warp for >10m depth.

12mm warp may seem large but ease of handling is important.


Dare I ask what anchors you have ? :)
 
Good question. I'll be interested in all the replies.

I reckon the Achilles is on the border between being recommended 6mm and 8mm chain.

In theory 6mm is ample, and 35 metres of 6mm will weigh the same in the locker overhanging the bow, as 20 metres of 8mm...

...and the claim that heavier chain provides a more horizontal pull on the hook, seems in doubt under circumstances when the tide or wind are extreme, because the rode forms a straight line in spite of its weight.

I've heard most boats in the Caribbean anchor with rope alone...I guess they rely on sand being less abrasive than rocky ground in the UK. But the idea that catenary is a contributory consideration in selecting chain rode, seems undone by them managing without it.
 
Last edited:
slawosz said:
Hi,
I need to buy anchor chain for my 24 foot Achilles 24. I already got 30 meters of nylon 12 mm rope, and thinking about getting 15 or 20 meters of 6 mm chain. My main sailing area is River Blackwater, with occasional short day cruises (Felixstowe, Ramsgate). Is it good or I should change something?
Click to expand...

My 19ft Sea Wych has 1/4" chain . I Think you need to go heavier than 6mm for the Achilles 24. 7 mm, if you can get, it perhaps
My preference is for all chain ( 90ft in my case)
 
I have plough anchor. There is an eye on the bottom off anchor, should I attach there some rope to retrive? I have seen some tests on youtube and it can dig quite hard in the mud.
 
Last edited:
When I had a 26' Westerly Centaur I had 6mm chain and a genuine Bruce. Never had a problem.
Present boat is a Centurion 32 with 8mm chain and a CQR.
In both cases the rode is all chain.
I prefer the Bruce to the CQR but I can live with that because, in case of an emergency, the second anchor is a Bruce.
 
I changed from 20m 8mm to 30m G40 6mm which was less cost, nearly as strong, less weight to pull up and a longer chain so a win all round. That is on a 26ft 2.5T boat with a rather small chain locker. If I remember correctly there was an offer at EYEmarine which made it a bit of a bargain. It is worth having extra warp that you can add in exceptional conditions but you should be fine with 30m chain and 30m warp for normal anchoring.
 
slawosz said:
Hi,
I need to buy anchor chain for my 24 foot Achilles 24. I already got 30 meters of nylon 12 mm rope, and thinking about getting 15 or 20 meters of 6 mm chain. My main sailing area is River Blackwater, with occasional short day cruises (Felixstowe, Ramsgate). Is it good or I should change something?
Click to expand...

I've done plenty of anchoring with not much chain. My first boat, 28ft, came with about 3m of chain.
Enough nylon rope for 5x depth is good.
I sometimes use a weight part way down the rode.

It depends what you want.
I don't go looking to anchor through storms, if I get caught, I will put out a lot of rope and possibly a second anchor.
Not having a windlass for the anchor, I don't want to be lifting 15m of chain plus the anchor if it's not necessary.
Weight in the bow will affect the performance of your boat.

I would suggest that 4m of chain is the minimum to reduce chafe on the rope from the seabed.

IMHO, the worst thing you can do is make your kit so heavy that you don't feel like anchoring for lunch.
So that's the balance.
 
My boat a Moody 31 at just over 4Tons had 6mm chain which was fine but I thought maybe a bit light.
I had a discussion with the excellent people at Eye Co and I replaced it with 30 metres of 6mm grade 40 chain together with 20 metres of 12mm octoplait. Most of my anchoring is east coast and occasionally abroad in Holland/Belgium.
I anchor mostly in fairly benign conditions but they said that the 6mm was fine with plenty of strength.
They did me a good deal with discount off the on line price and did the splice for me.
They are probably the best marine company I have dealt with.
 
slawosz said:
Hi,
I need to buy anchor chain for my 24 foot Achilles 24. I already got 30 meters of nylon 12 mm rope, and thinking about getting 15 or 20 meters of 6 mm chain. My main sailing area is River Blackwater, with occasional short day cruises (Felixstowe, Ramsgate). Is it good or I should change something?
Click to expand...

Here on the East Coast your proposal is good, you don't need more than 20m of chain. Most of the places you will be anchoring will be soft mud so, dare I say, and in my experience, most anchor designs will be good.

Www.solocoastalsailing.co.uk
 
I'm persuaded by (and I already held) the broadly-held view here, that 6mm chain is strong enough for Slawosz's Achilles.

Is Jimmy Green's broad recommendation (below) made to cover very heavy boats, or extremely challenging conditions, or to prevent anyone complaining about the chandlery's advice after suffering exceptional circumstances...or, just to sell heavier chain?

6mm DIN766 Grade 40 Anchor Chain is generally suitable for yachts up to approximately 6 metres, length overall.

Six metres is a shade under 20ft, and the DIN766 Grade 40 chain is better than standard.
 
The recommended chains size for my Snapdragon 24 is 8mm, but I've recently changed to 6mm because, following an illness, the weight of the 8mm plus my oversized Delta was too much for me.

The breaking strain of 6mm chain is well over 2 tons, so the probability of me needing to anchor in conditions that will put even a ton of strain on my rode in and around the Solent is pretty close to zero. The same for you on the east coast.

The one thing I would add is a rope snubber. Mine is a length of 10mm nylon - an offcut from my mooring lines - with a rubber snubber like this
32-308.jpg
and a bit of flexible pipe to protect from chafe where it goes over the bow roller. One end has an eye spice to go over the Samson post, the other has two chain hooks, one sized for the anchor chain, the other for my mooring chain. If you don't let out all your chain, use the snubber to give a bit of slack in the chain where it comes on boat. This has two advantages, it reduces snatching and shoch loads and it stops the graunching noises from the anchor roller as the boat moves.
 
Thanks. And if I would like to travel further north (up to Edinburgh) or cross channel, should I get more chain/rope or it would be still good? Although I am not planning bigger voyages for now, but never say never.
 
I doubt you'll want to weigh the boat down (and fill her limited stowage space) with more warps and chain/ground tackle than you need, until you plan the longer trip.

I'm interested in where you will secure the anchor chain. There's no Samson post on any Achilles 24 that I've seen. Are the mooring-warp cleats bolted to anything sturdier than the thickness of the glassfibre? Are two of those cleats likely to be enough to bear the forces from a bridle with a chain-hook attached?
 
slawosz said:
Thanks. And if I would like to travel further north (up to Edinburgh) or cross channel, should I get more chain/rope or it would be still good? Although I am not planning bigger voyages for now, but never say never.
Click to expand...

You'll probably be fine with 45/50m of mixed rode, but there's nothing to stop you adding more rope. I tend to the view that, as long as you can store it, there's no such thing as too much :)

I wouldn't add more chain; I would think an Achilles would take less kindly to the extra weight than my tubby and already slow Snapdragon, and pulling a load of chain up from a deep anchorage is an overrated experience.
 
In case you're thinking of buying a big reel of 3-strand rope for deep anchoring, it's probably worth looking at multiplait first...

48127517108_d776001aa0.jpg


...by all accounts, it doesn't kink in the monstrous entangling way that 3-strand will, so it won't be a vile thing to handle and store.
 
A lot of people are recommending a mixed rode.
Fair enough I guess... IF you are certain that there is a clear, friendly, bottom with no sharp rocks or outcrops in the vicinity.
And, no, I don't rely on what the charts say about the bottom if I cannot see with my own eyes. In fact, if possible the first thing that I do after anchoring is to pull myself down the chain, hand over hand, to see for myself if there is a possibility for the rode to wrap itself round anything nasty. Not unusual around these parts (Malta).
 
If there's any load at all on the anchor, the rope will be off the bottom, so not normally very vulnerable. I can see a strong argument for all chain on a coral bottom, but there isn't a lot of coral on the east coast, just a lot of mud.

All chain is fine if you have a windlass to heave it all up - in fact it's probably better as the gypsy tends not to deal with rope very well, but doing it by hand is hard work if you're in deeper water than usual.

+1 for the octoplait rope, mine always feeds away down the hawse pipe under its own weight, with no problem and no tangles. Normally, the only bit I have to feed down the pipe is the rope/chain splice
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Share this page

Top