Securing Anchor Bitt to forepeak

Zane Krajancic · Post by **Zane Krajancic** » Wed Mar 30, 2005 10:29 pm

Whats the best/safest way to secure your anchor bitt to the interior in the forepeak? Wether you use all chain or a combo of chain and rope - should the first few feet be all rope to avoid ripping a hole in your hull should you have the unlucky event of your anchor rode running away on you.
I ask this as a potential liveaboard where my anchor system will be my "Insurance".

David · Post by **David** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 10:17 am

I would suggest attaching about 30 feet of yellow polyprop line to the end of your rode--so that 1) you know when you are at the end of your rope, and 2) should you have to cut your rode to get away the line will float and you have a better chance of retreiving it later. Attach the end of the poly line to your forepeak bulkhead with a light line that will break under tension or that you can easily cut if you have to.

David

bcooke · Post by **bcooke** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 7:07 pm

It is a sad moment when you toss your brand new anchor over the side, attached to brand new chain, and brand new nylon rode, and then think, "I should let out a few more feet..." as the bitter end slides through you fingers and leaps free. The nylon rode will float tantalizingly close for a short time as the current slowly grabs your boat and pushes it downstream. Eventually, either the boat will drift too far away to see the line or the view of the rode with slowly disolve as it sinks beneath the surface to forever adorn Neptune's garden. One's first urge is to jump in after the rode but - hopefully - one remembers that treading water while holding the end of a rope held securely by a big new anchor and watching your boat drift away is quite probably the only worse feeling left in the world.

One could spend hours and hours and hours trolling back and forth with a grapple trying to recover a new anchor and rode...

-Britton

Post by **Tim** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 7:28 pm

bcooke wrote:One could spend hours and hours and hours trolling back and forth with a grapple trying to recover a new anchor and rode...

Spoken like a man with experience...?

bcooke · Post by **bcooke** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 8:14 pm

Spoken like a man with experience?

It is still quite painful to recollect.

As for securing the anchor rode...

Zane, what kind of boat did you say you had? In my Triton there is a wooden peice that would be called a stem if the boat were made out of wood that instead just lays up against the pointy end of the bow and supports it I suppose. I was planning on eye bolts into this hunk of wood and just tying off the rode to the eyebolts.

I have heard of using something that will break under heavy strain to secure the rode but I can't think of a time when it would really be needed. Maybe someone can remind me why this is a good idea. I do like the polyprop idea. I guess it would have to be as long as the depths you anchored in to be effective but I can think of at least one time I would have liked to have had it...

A sharp knife will cut nylon rode in the sizes we use pretty quick, particularly if it is under load. Plus if the anchor is pulling out the rode with any speed (if it fell over the side while in deep water maybe?) or I simply reached the end and then had the boat pull up short (snap turn anchoring - lots of fun and impresses the ladies...) I would hate to have the "breakaway" line function correctly. I would much rather keep my anchor and rode. Hopefully the bow section is stout enough to take a pretty good shock load such as the anchoring system could provide.

Liveaboard or overnight the anchoring system is always your best insurance and at least in my case I am never completely comfortable falling asleep at anchor. I do it of course, but thinking about what I could wake up to gives me the whillies.

-Britton

Figment · Post by **Figment** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 8:44 pm

bcooke wrote:snap turn anchoring - lots of fun and impresses the ladies...

Sometimes I wonder if we ever have any clue of what impresses the ladies. :)

Yeah, I've heard the arguments in favor of using an easily-broken connection, but really I have a hard time imagining how the need would ever arise. If the need ever does arise, you'll have other worries, I think.

A PO installed a padeye to the anchor bulkhead. I've never felt the need to alter this, but then I've never run out all of my rode either.

Zane Krajancic · Post by **Zane Krajancic** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 9:13 pm

"Zane, what kind of boat did you say you had? In my Triton there is a wooden peice that would be called a stem if the boat were made out of wood that instead just lays up against the pointy end of the bow and supports it I suppose. I was planning on eye bolts into this hunk of wood and just tying off the rode to the eyebolts"

My Boat is a Frances 26. She is built of wood/FRP composite, so there is of course a backbone leading fore and aft right up to the stem. Sorry of terminology not quite right.

JonnyBoats · Post by **JonnyBoats** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 10:43 pm

I have heard of using something that will break under heavy strain to secure the rode but I can't think of a time when it would really be needed.

Actually if you put the anchor over with an all chain rode, and the chain gets away from you as you are paying it out, there are some serious forces to contend with. If you are in heavy weather, you probably can't just "grab onto" the chain with your hands to stop it from paying out, so you may find the only way to stop it paying out is to have it pay out fully and hope that the bitter end made fast in the locker below holds. Unfortunately with an all chain rode the instantaneous shock load may be many tons, enough to rip a strength bulkhead right out of your boat. The purpose of the nylon line between the chain and the attachment point on the boat is to act as an elastic shock absorber. Think of it like the difference between driving your car at 60 MPH into a brick wall or a big wall of foam rubber. They will both stop you, but one will be far more painful.

Whats the best/safest way to secure your anchor bitt to the interior in the forepeak?

Getting back to this original question, are you talking about a bitt as in a fitting around which one wraps a line or chain to secure it? If so, then the bitt itself should be through bolted with a strong backer plate and preferably secured to more than just the deck.

Zane Krajancic · Post by **Zane Krajancic** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 10:50 pm

Bitt, Sampson Post, Maltese Cross, Cleat ?????????? What do you guys use in the anchor locker to secure it to the boats interior? Note - I don't mean on deck.
Cheers

bcooke · Post by **bcooke** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 11:06 pm

Actually if you put the anchor over with an all chain rode, and the chain gets away from you as you are paying it out, there are some serious forces to contend with

Yeah, I can see that. At least in deeper anchorages. That would be a good reason to put a braking device in the system but of course Murphy's Law says that sooner or later everything is going to go wrong and the all chain rode is going to come flying out. When that happens it won't be me that tries to slow it down.

I think even in an "all chain" rode I would have a final section of nylon to act as a shock absorber. So whether you were using nylon rode or a breakable line in the end, a cleat would work fine and would be easy to release if you wanted to take the whole kit and kaboodle off the boat.

On boats with a sampson post I often see the rode looped around the post below. I guess I would use whatever was convenient to secure the rode. It's main purpose is to keep you from doing something stupid like paying out too much line...

-Britton

JonnyBoats · Post by **JonnyBoats** » Thu Mar 31, 2005 11:18 pm

Bitt, Sampson Post, Maltese Cross, Cleat ?????????? What do you guys use in the anchor locker to secure it to the boats interior? Note - I don't mean on deck.

The important thing here is to make sure that the thing you attach the bitter end of the rhode to is substantially stronger than the end of the rhode. It?s sort of like shrouds and chainplates, the chainplate should always be stronger so that the shroud will fail before the chainplate.

To illustrate consider a 10,000 lb sailboat in a hurricane with 300 ft of ? nch bbb chain and the bitter end wrapped around the keel stepped mast. If the chain were to fetch up hard, it would most likely buckle the mast with no appreciable damage to the chain, not a good situation. If on the other hand there had been 30 ft of 1/2 inch three strand nylon in the rhode, the mast would be OK.

Often I have seen the line connected to a U bolt passed through a plywood under the V berth with a backer plate.

Post by **Tim** » Fri Apr 01, 2005 8:09 am

I think an all-chain rode should have a short length of line (the polyprop idea above is a good one) that secures the final links to the boat. If you should ever need to release your rode for some reason, all you'd have to do is cut this line, not attempt to undo a shackle that was under load.

Also, if you did have the almost inconceivable situation where all your chain is somehow running out unstoppably at high speed and with great inertia, the last thing you want is for it to fetch up hard at the end. On our small sailboats, that sort of shock load would be nearly impossible to properly prepare for with any fitting. I'd rather that a short length of relatively weak line be there to break and lose the anchor rather than potentially destroy part of the boat.

In other words, under no circumstances should an all-chain rode be shackled directly to the boat, at least on the sort of boats we're talking about.

If you aren't planning an all-chain rode, just tie the end of the anchor rode to something relatively strong. All you're truly trying to do is prevent it from slipping overboard in a momentary lapse of reason. The free-falling horror scenarios will likely never come up in practice, and only apply to all-chain rodes to begin with. A rope anchor rode isn't heavy enough to continue running at high speed if the anchor's on the bottom. If your anchor is falling off and you're not touching bottom within 200-300', you have other problems. The attachment point need not be anything spectacularly strong, particularly for a rope/chain rode like most of us use. I'd want something stronger (through bolts, backing plate) to deal with chain, because even holding the weight of the chain would require more significant strength. As with anything, it's just as easy to do it right the first time, whatever the situation.

I drilled a hole through a small dividing bulkhead in my chain locker and tied the bitter ends of the 2 rodes to it with bowlines. To prevent the scenario of letting all my rode out and not knowing where the end is in advance, I also took the added insurance step of marking the rode clearly a number of feet before the end. If this mark comes through the hawsepipe, I know the end is near.

The yellow polyprop line mentioned earlier would also serve well if you tied it securely to the end of your existing rode. Polyprop is slippery and doesn't hold knots well, so you'd want to be sure you had it well-secured. You could probably stitch the knot together to ensure that it didn't come untied.

David, what do you do to secure the poly to the end of your nylon rode?

David · Post by **David** » Fri Apr 01, 2005 10:52 am

Tim,

Exactly what you suggest: the poly is 1/4" and ties to an eye splice and then is stitched together and served with waxed thread. The poly is longer than the depth I anchor in.

I added it after I made the literal mistake of asking a newbee guest on board to drop the anchor as i was sailing up to the perfect spot in about 20 kts of wind, and Lee dutifully went forward and threw the anchor over and stood there watching the rode run out. Luckily it was down in the Keys and i was able to recover the rode fairly easily. But I learned my lesson...

David