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Getting the anchor ready...


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I'm heading onto the Severn tomorrow at Stourport and travelling down to Worcester. I want to have the anchor ready to go in case of an emergency. I'm on my own and not experienced with rivers.

 

This is what I've done so far:-

 

Attached a nylon rope to a ring in the anchor locker with a D shackle

 

anchor002_zpsbb729edd.jpg

 

Threaded the rope through a 'periscope' (?)

 

anchor004_zps59fdcdc1.jpg

 

Attached the rope to the chain with a bowline and attached the chain to the anchor with a D shackle

 

anchor2001_zpsf8f80d23.jpg

 

In the top right hand corner of the second photo there's something that I could thread the rope through...is this what this is for?

 

Am I ready to go? Have I done this right?

 

Thanks

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Personally I tend to fix a small cable tie to hold shackles shut so they don't vibrate loose :)

 

Or thin wire. This works if the shackles have a little hole in the end of the pin - not all do but most.

 

Probably unnecessary but I have had several anchors out with magnets which had nothing attached to them...

Edited by magnetman
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Just a couple or three of questions :

 

1) What size/weight is your boat ?

2) What size is the anchor rope ?

3) How long is the rope and chain (individually) ?

 

You now need to find something strong to tie-off the anchor - T-Stud maybe ?

 

As you have it at the moment you wil be deploying 100% of your chain/rope - if you are only in a 6 foot deep river then you will not need it all.

 

The end of the anchor rope is called the 'bitter end' and that is why you attach it to the Shackle in the anchor locker - so you dont see the 'bitter end' going overboard

 

Your set up at the moment will cause the rope to chafe through very quickly and put stress on your "Gypsy" (Tube)


DON'T use that flimsy 'silver' T-bar held on with 4 screws as seen in Picture 2

Edited by Alan de Enfield
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Just a couple or three of questions :

 

1) What size/weight is your boat ? She's 57'

2) What size is the anchor rope ? It's 10mm

3) How long is the rope and chain (individually) ? The rope is about 15m and the chain about 3.5m

 

You now need to find something strong to tie-off the anchor - T-Stud maybe ?

 

As you have it at the moment you wil be deploying 100% of your chain/rope - if you are only in a 6 foot deep river then you will not need it all.

 

The end of the anchor rope is called the 'bitter end' and that is why you attach it to the Shackle in the anchor locker - so you dont see the 'bitter end' going overboard

 

Your set up at the moment will cause the rope to chafe through very quickly and put stress on your "Gypsy" (Tube)

DON'T use that flimsy 'silver' T-bar held on with 4 screws as seen in Picture 2

 

Thanks Alan

 

I can't see that there's anything to tie off the anchor to other than the T-bar so I may have no other choice blink.png

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Gypsy? I thought that was the wheel on an anchor winch which mates with the chain unsure.png

 

 

I would call it a chain pipe

The deck fitting I mean

 

You are correct - a "brain-fart"

 

The deck-fitting is called a 'Spurling-Pipe'.

It is sometimes incorrectly called a Hawsepipe, but this is the hole in the side of a ship hat the anchor chain goes through.

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Essbee, on 12 Sept 2014 - 5:42 PM, said:

 

Thanks Alan

 

I can't see that there's anything to tie off the anchor to other than the T-bar so I may have no other choice blink.png

 

I know you have what you have, but take the opportunity to upgrade when you can.

 

It looks to me like Polypropylene rope - is it ?

 

10mm Polypropylene rope has a breaking starin of under 1.5 tons (actually 1430kg), a 57 foot NB 'jerking' to a stop against the flow when the anchor bites will be applying much more load than that.

 

Polypropylene has very little stretch - Nylon rope is recommended for anchor ropes (warps) as it stretches and reduces the load on the fittings.

 

Looking at the 'silver' T it looks very flimsy - is there really nothing a little bit more "structural" you can attach the rope to ?

 

With such a short length of chain you will need to work on something like 7 or 8 times water depth to get a good catenary and to set the anchor. With your rope/combination that is only about 2.5 metres water depth.

(if you have 100% chain you need 3x water depth and with 100% rope you need 10x water depth)

 

Before you go try and get hold of either another 5 metres of 12mm chain (join it onto the existing chain with a shackle), or another 15+ metres of rope (ideally 14mm Nylon)

 

Good luck - enjoy the trip

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I think the cleat is probably ok but I agree with the nylon rope recommendation.

 

Some of the cleats with a central thread (not clever) are weak but as long as those 4 bolts go right through and have washers I reckon its okay.

 

A nice M20 eyebolt with an extra steel plate under the nut might be better :)

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With that set up you can only really anchor in about 3m of water.

 

That's not much!

 

From post #7

 

"With such a short length of chain you will need to work on something like 7 or 8 times water depth to get a good catenary and to set the anchor. With your rope/combination that is only about 2.5 metres water depth."

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7 or 8 is a bit pessimistic. 6 is the general accepted rule for rope and chain.

 

Maybe so - but in such cases I'd rather work on worst case scenario's.

 

The chain is only 3,5mts so is a fairly small percentage of the total length, but irrespective of the calculation multiplier we both came to a similar figure - a water depth of 2,5-3.0 metres. Insufficient !!

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But as you are going downstream and single handed then the anchor should be at the rear with you

I think that is a bad idea

 

 

 

The anchor should be 'tied off' at the bow - never at the stern.

 

You can run the anchor rope along the roof and have the anchor at your feet, ready to deploy.

I agree except I run the chain along the the side but then I have 4 solar panels on my roof

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anchor004_zps59fdcdc1.jpg

 

Attached the rope to the chain with a bowline and attached the chain to the anchor with a D shackle

 

 

 

Sorry but that rope looks like crap. Would you really want to be relying on that in an emergency?

 

I would call it a chain pipe

The deck fitting I mean

 

I would call it a hawse pipe.

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Just to add my ten cent's worth, and largely in agreement with everyone here...

 

Always 'mouse' your shackles, the traditional way is using mousing wire, but these days zip ties do the job just as well. You would be surprised how easily a shackle pin can shake out of its housing.

 

I would stay well clear of using PolyProp for a number of reasons. As already said it does not have very good load bearing capabilities, it wears through very easily, it is difficult to get a good splice into it and it doesn't hold a knot very well. Apart from all this it is a pig to work with, I am an experienced bowman on racing yachts and used to hauling anchors by hand, I wouldn't touch PolyProp without good gloves.

 

HTH

 

Nigel

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Gypsy? I thought that was the wheel on an anchor winch which mates with the chain unsure.png

 

 

I would call it a chain pipe

The deck fitting I mean

 

Correct on the meaning of anchor winch gypsy - through hull fitting for chain usually known as Hawse pipe though.

 

To the OP - that line looks very flimsy. If its polypropylene it will rot in the sun. Suggest proper anchor rode, the best of which I have found is Anchor Plait (there's a clue in the name wink.png ). Very flexible with less tendency to tangle - can be spliced directly to chain.

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You are correct - a "brain-fart"

 

The deck-fitting is called a 'Spurling-Pipe'.

It is sometimes incorrectly called a Hawsepipe, but this is the hole in the side of a ship hat the anchor chain goes through.

Or an implement that a person from the Black Country uses to water his lawn..

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The hawse pipe is the hole in the side of the vessel (the one that the rats climbing the anchor chains use to enter the boat/ship)

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawsepiper

 

A hawsepipe is a pipe, not a hole. This is from your own link:

 

A ship’s hawsepipe is the pipe passing through the bow section of a ship that the anchor chain passes through.

 

In that definition I would probably include a deck fitting which fulfils the same function. So it's a hawse pipe deck fitting rather than a chain pipe.

Edited by blackrose
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Hawsepipe, the inclined pipe or tube which leads from the hawsehole of a ship, on the deck close to the bows, to the outside of the vessel.

 

The Oxford Companion to Ships and the Sea

 

There is no entry for spurling pipe .... however.......

 

Spurling gate, a cast iron fitting in the deck of a ship through which the cable passes on the way down to the chain locker.

Edited by John V
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The normally held view is that the anchor is there largely to secure the end of the chain, the chain should have sufficient weight to create a significant drag to hold the boat and to form a spring (the effect of trying to lift the heavy chain off the bottom will hold the boat in a tide or current). In that case the chain appears too light w.r.t. the size of the anchor. Forces generated when the boat is static are quite low, in a river related to the drag in the current, in a seaway you must add the bucking of the boat in waves. You can probably get away with an anchor, a short length of chain to hold the stock of the anchor on the river bed, and plenty of rope, in a river; chain comes into its own in a seaway.

 

If you ever wish to use the anchor to serve as an emergency brake you will need really substantial fixings and much thicker rope. The snatch force, if the anchor bites on anything solid, slowing the boat from maybe 3 knots in a strong current will be related to the weight of the boat (obviously) and to the elasticity of the rope.

 

If the rope has zero elasticity the snatch force is, in theory, infinite. If the boat is decelerated over a reasonable distance the snatch force is WxD/g where W is the mass (weight) of the boat, D is the deceleration and g is the gravity constant (in the same units). For example if the boat is slowed at a deceleration of 32ft/sec/sec then D/g is 1 and the snatch force is perhaps 18tonnes. In the case of stopping the boat dead from 3 knots in 2 seconds the average snatch force will be about 1tonne, (actually increasing from zero to about 3 tonnes as the rope stretches and takes up the strain) and the distance travelled (stretch in the rope) will be about 4metres. So if you have 20metres of rope it needs to be able to stretch by 4 metres. This is 20%, about the limit for nylon or polyethylene rope. The rope thickness needs to be at least 14mm to withstand this breaking strain.

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I would call it a hawse pipe.

If you want to :) but it is in fact a chainpipe ;)

 

Hawsers are used on big boats not canal boats.

 

Google "chain pipe" and you will find it being sold at chandlers.

 

 

Try a google image search you'll see the difference. The P&O ferry I am on now (just off Calais) has a hawsepipe or probably several. A canal boat has a chain pipe...

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