Anchoring a boat has come a long way. On our sailboats, it always felt like a risky proposition. We’d make sure to set the anchor and watch our position in relation to a fixed point on land. I’d stand at the bow for a long time before turning in, feeling the pressure of wind on my cheek, wondering if I should let out more rode. Many nights I’d be up in a flash if I heard a strange noise or a shift in the wind, looking out for something familiar on the dark shore to ease my mind.
The reason for this unease stemmed from our sailboat’s lightweight anchoring system and our inexperience as boaters. Our largest sailboat had a Bruce anchor that couldn’t have weighed more than 20 pounds with just 50 feet of anchor chain and 200 feet of rope. I embedded a series of colored zip ties into the nylon rode to approximate the amount of rode we had deployed. A small Maxwell windlass made pulling up the light anchor easy, but it couldn’t accommodate chain, so I had to pull up that last 50 feet by hand. The windlass tended to break off those colored zip ties, which threw off my already confusing system of measuring rode (“two red ties and one blue one is 75 feet, or is that 125 feet?”).
And yet, our anchor dragged just one time in all those years of sailing. We were anchored on the south side of Blake Island, an area known for currents and kelp beds, which can be trouble for anchor holding. I stood at the bow a long time that night, studying our swing, scanning other nearby boats. The next morning as I washed the breakfast dishes, I looked out the companionway to see a boat gliding our way. The boat’s captain stood at the bow with a cup of coffee and an amused expression. What the hell? Doesn’t he know his boat’s adrift? I climbed into the cockpit to get a better view of his troubles when I noticed that, in fact, we were the boat on the move.
“Morning, skipper!” The captain called over. “You seem to be dragging.”
I had the engine going in about 15 seconds and managed to avoid hitting another boat or grounding ashore. What if this had happened in the wee hours of the night? That was a lucky break.
Indiscretion’s Anchoring System
On our trawler, we have a much more advanced anchoring setup: a 120-pound Rocna 55 anchor, 400 feet of high test anchor chain, a Maxwell 3500 windlass with an integrated chain counter, and a snubber line which takes any surge strain off the windlass. The chain counter provides a digital readout in the pilothouse of exactly how much rode we have out. An “Anchor Watch” on a nearby computer screen displays Indiscretion’s current GPS position in relation to the anchor. If she leaves a predetermined radius around the anchor, an alarm sounds, and we get a text message. Anchoring technology designed to let the skipper and crew rest easy at night.
We also keep a TecTecTec VPRO500 laser range finder in the pilothouse that provides precise distances to other anchored boats and objects onshore. Now, instead of worrying whether we’ve gotten closer to a nearby boat, we can put the vessel inside the viewfinder of the device, click a button and get the actual distance. This has eliminated disputes between Captain and First Mate regarding how close another boat is to us.
Two Boat Units Later …
And yet, with all this robust anchoring gear and technology, we still managed to flub up in a big way—no damage to the boat luckily, but certainly a ding to our pocketbook.
The first sign of trouble occurred when we attempted to anchor in about 60 feet of water off Blake Island’s west side. We would typically try to anchor in shallower water closer to shore, but the anchorage was full. We needed to let out 300 feet of chain to maintain a 5:1 ratio. I kept the boat in position from the pilothouse while Lisa deployed the chain from the bow.
“Hold up!” Lisa called after a few minutes. “We’re almost out of chain.” Sure enough, just past 200 feet, red paint on the anchor chain indicated we were near the bitter end. I opened the chain locker and saw maybe 30 feet more before we ran out. I scratched my head. The boat was commissioned with 400 feet of chain. What happened to the other 150 feet?
We pulled up the anchor and went looking for a more suitable anchorage. And I added new anchor rode to our boat shopping list. 250 feet of chain wasn’t enough for some of the anchorages we planned to visit during our travels.
We bought 400 feet of 3/8″ high test Grade 43 galvanized anchor chain at Washington Chain and Supply based on recommendations from fellow trawler captains. The total cost, including sales tax, was about $2,200. We decided to wait until our spring haulout to swap out the chain. The drum weighs over 600 pounds, and I didn’t relish the idea of wrestling it down the dock. Washington Chain and Supply has a convenient location on the south side of Seattle and loaded the drum into the bed of my pickup truck with a forklift.
I backed the truck under the bow. Lisa lowered the anchor down to me and then started unspooling chain into the bed of the truck. When we reached the end of the chain, she fed the short length of rope that serves as our bitter end. This rope section allows the anchor line to be severed quickly in case of an emergency. I surveyed the old chain now flaked around me in the bed of the truck. It seemed in fine shape other than flakes of rust on the section that sat lowest in the chain locker. And it sure looked like a big pile.
Before loading the new chain, Lisa checked the chain counter in the pilothouse. All 238 feet deployed.
I shackled the anchor to the new chain, added seizing wire, and watched the new anchor chain climb up the bow pulpit. With all the new chain on board, I checked the chain counter. It showed zero chain deployed. I was expecting an error message because we just pulled up 162 feet more chain that we let out. Huh.
We dropped the anchor to the ground of the boatyard and let out 50 feet of chain according to the chain counter. I stretched the chain out and measured it. 83 feet. What? We let out another 50 feet. Again, 83 feet by the tape measure. It seemed our brilliant chain counting system couldn’t count. And extrapolating this error to the chain counter’s 238 feet meant we really did have 400 feet of chain all along. Doh!
This chain counting error meant we set out way too much anchor chain every time we anchored these past two years. If the chain counter said 100 feet, we actually had 167 feet out. Uggh!
It took some simple algebra and 15 minutes of tinkering with the Maxwell display in the pilothouse to calibrate the chain counter properly. We let out another 50 feet of anchor chain, and this time the measurement of the chain deployed matched the chain counter. My guess is this calibration error has persisted since this trawler’s commissioning over ten years ago.
What a humbling lesson for someone with an intrinsic trust of data and computers. I never once considered that the chain counter might be wrong. My climb up the steep learning curve of mastering this complex trawler continues, two inches forward, one inch back. But at least we have brand-spanking-new anchor chain and resolved an anchoring issue we didn’t even know we had. And perhaps we will be a little more suspicious of the digital readouts onboard this little ship. Trust, but verify seems a good adage here.
Questions or comments about the anchoring gear aboard Indiscretion? Let us know in the comment section below. Fair winds!
Really enjoy reading your notes. Contemplating trawler ownership ourselves. Life long sailor as well.
What type snubber/bridle do you use for your anchor?
Tank you and wishing you calm seas and no wind.
Thanks, Luc. We upgraded from a basic single line snubber to the medium-sized Mantus bridle a few months back. It’s simple to deploy and we had a chance to put it to the test recently in some pretty big winds. Worked perfectly.