Rope to chain? Loose the rope. (with a windlass)
For many years we would anchor with two hooks off the bow and even a third anchor set off the stern. We got used to the hassles and became proud of showing off our teamwork in anchorages. We always used double braid nylon line because it flakes/piles well in our small anchor locker and stern bucket. Now? Let me tell you,,,,never again. We just learned the magic of chain. When we refit our H34 with a windlass, I made sure it would work with a rope splice. I also bought the rope drum option for the port roller. After the rope arrived, I tried to splice the 200' of 1/2" double braid to the 100' of 1/4" HT chain. No way! I tracked down two riggers to do the work. They refused. Two hard of a splice, they said. I went to my local West Marine store. They did a price match to my first 100' of chain and had a 'proof link' to join the chain into a 200' continuous length that passes perfectly through the windlass. This chain can NOT be welded, my welder friends told me. The weak link is the proof coupling but it's still plenty strong. On our vacation to Desolation Sound that we just returned from, here is what we learned. On our boat, we had to remove additional material on the sides of the 'cut-out' anchor locker so that the chain will fall to the area below the original locker. Now it can be recovered from the helm via the control switch I installed at the NavPod for that purpose. I couldn't use it until the chain fell freely without me pushing the pile over manually. That's what sea-trials are for. Works great now. All two hundred feet retrieve without manual intervention. Here is the good part. NO ROPE! This is another world. Not once did we need to use a second anchor. The extra weight penalty is only about 50lbs over the original 200' of rope. It might even be less. Also the Bruce now works wonderfully. Only once did it not set the first time. That was because we were backing down too fast. When the Bruce was on rope, we used it as our second anchor because it set so poorly. These anchors need to be sold with a disclaimer that reads 'for all chain rodes only'. And the boat sits over the pile of chain below the bow and never searches for another boat to bump into. The chain, when recovered aboard with the Bruce, has no effect on trim. The boat sits evenly on her lines. And if I decide to race again someday, I can dump the whole thing at my slip and still be legal with the second anchor (Fortress) on rope. The 200' of chain is 180 lbs, my windlass is 15 lbs and the Bruce is 22 lbs. That's 217 lbs and the chain is good to 40' boats, probably bigger if used on a sail boat. Did I mention that anchoring and recovering is now just pushing a button?
