good morning and welcome to sending vessel Seeker let's talk about anchoring heresy yeah
going against conventional wisdom which sometimes doesn't look like wisdom at all this is my
anchor winch out on Deck so I can roll everything up it's powered by a hydraulic motor that's
going to get an upgrade by the way and I can put chain or amp steel and chain or whatever
I want to on this side I got a piece of amp steel over here on this side and the reason
it's designed in two sections is because if you're pulling up a load off the bottom something
heavy not an anchor but you know let's say something else you could take all the slack
line up over here and then before it goes taunt flip it around over here and put three
wraps here and take up the pressure over here that way when the line has pressure on it
it doesn't cut down through all the loose wraps you know in your stack so you separate
that job out you know they get the same problem on four-wheel drive trucks to get stuck in
the mud and trenches and such if they wrap too many loose lines on and then pull tight
it cuts down in there and it ain't coming back out I used a winch in my front yard for
years to pull pieces of Steel around and
so this setup avoids that and today I've got a little piece of amp steel Shackled onto
5 8 inch galvanized chain and one of the things that doesn't seem to be understood is this
thing this is a chain stop so what happens is when you pull the chain in it opens up
if I pull enough I can actually unlock the chain from it I don't want to do that right
now I haven't been sitting on that anchor and in the down position you can see that
it's not going to be able to go anywhere and it's made out of half inch and 3 8 inch steel
welded to a steel deck with steel bulkheads underneath that it ain't going nowhere without
all kinds of things having gone wrong and so I get told a lot oh you need a snubber
no no I I don't need a snubber snubbers are great things though a snubber is a system
by which you would have a chain hook and you hook it into your chain and then it'd be tight
on the line it would come back up over here and be tied into a cleat and I don't have
any cleats yet well I got cleats but they're not welded onto the boat yet because I haven't
decided exactly where I want them to go but they'll probably be one up here snubbers are
often done on a bridle so the hook goes onto the chain and then one line comes back this
way and one line comes back the other way here's what the snipper looks like on Charlie's
boat you can see the anchor winch and the cleats that he ties the snubber off to and
they go to the outside edge where the boat is actually stronger and we're talking about
fiberglass boats plastic boats boats that break if you break a steel boat you have really
done something but breaking a plastic boat is pretty easy where were we we were in Turks
and Caicos and we had pulled in there because of the weather it was getting bad and it was
a nice Anchorage we went to bed overnight and everything but during the night the wind
shifted and the swells really shifted and they picked up so they were coming in six
foot high that's not a problem except on Charlie's boat it's a 48 foot fiberglass boat and it
the one of the hooks that was in the chain bent open a 3 8 inch stainless steel chinesium
hook wide open so that chain came off and the load goes on to his anchor winch now if
the load went on to this anchor winch it wouldn't be a problem it's all steel it's welded to
a steel deck it's got steel reinforcing underneath it again no issue but on a plastic boat there
was this loud crack and I was laying in bed and I thought Ah that's not right is it Doug
went the other dug on the boat got up and went and looked and said oh [ __ ] oh [ __ ]
running back across the deck so you know then he's letting us know there is something seriously
wrong so what had happened was when it loaded up on his anchor winch which is you know this
is the thing about yay big it's buried through the deck this buried through a Fiberglass
Deck broke the deck not just a little bit it was a crack but that was the loud bang
and then Doug got into action he got everybody up he got the boat turned on got in gear moved
forward that took the load off the anchor winch and then you know we got all that Gear
Up and moved over to a place that was sheltered for the new conditions and then once we got
to Antigua Charlie repaired the deck got a big piece of stainless steel and put it underneath
the deck as a doubler to go across so now his anchor winch will take a lot more load
so what I'm saying is there's no one way of doing it the right thing to do is what's right
for you the conditions you're in and your boat for me I like this stuff this is is half
inch amp steel or dyneema it takes 34 000 pounds to break this stuff that's 17 tons
or about a quarter of the weight of this entire vessel four of those lines you could pick
this boat up out of the water the downside to it is it doesn't like to chafe so you got
to keep it off the rocks and it's very lightweight which is nice to work with but it also doesn't
add anything to the anchoring it also doesn't stretch and that can be a problem for anchoring
but it's a problem you can overcome the solution to both those problems is a piece of chain
now I just got a little short piece on here I'll put it in the forward Locker you know
like take a pick which length do you like and if you want more then you can just connect
those together and have as much chain as you want so if I'm anchoring an emergency like
it goes over with that little piece of chain on because we need an anchor out now you also
hear this it's like well the Anchorage is and what holds the boat is the chain and well
you need both okay because throw out 100 feet of chain without an anchor on it and you will
drag I mean there is no doubt about it you try it on a beach behind a car if you like
you got to have an anchor to start digging in now the Chain's important too because it
takes shock load off that anchor so imagine if you would there's six foot swells coming
into the boat imagine these swells come in that would make the front of the boat come
up tighten up and then go back down and the next well do it again so you get this oscillating
motion and it's pulling hard against the anchor then it's slacking then it's pulling so it's
like jerking on it and you don't want that and one solution is a lot of heavy chain and
look at this you know we got about five miles per hour wind and my chain is headed to the
bottom quickly the anchor itself is you know it's 120 feet out that direction so most of
the change just laying on the bottom of the crabs it's you know it's like this it's one
big Seas it acts like a shock absorber it starts pulling it straight and then slacking
and then pulling it straight and slacking it never gets it all the way straight if it
does you're in trouble because that's a shock load and if you want to improve the situation
without adding more chain to it then you can use a thing called a sentinel which is a big
weight that they put out on the road itself and it's just a big lead way to just increases
the the weight of the road without adding more change so there's lots of things you
can do and I don't have a sentinel but if a hurricane comes along you know another anchor
hanging in the middle of that line that's a sentinel or I got a bunch of lead down below
too I might make myself a sentinel someday now let's get real heretical and steel floats
I know something that holds 34 000 pounds will also Float On The Water oh but it will
break it in Anchorage and then the rest of us will have to dodge your floating rope out
there it'll foul our props and we'll sink into all of the children think first off if
I break a line that can hold 34 000 pounds I am not really concerned with what's happening
in your life today secondly if I leave this line in the water for two weeks it's got enough
growth on it that it sinks to the bottom third the fact that it floats can be used to your
advantage and oh here it comes well you're a novice unit you've been on the water for
less than a year what do you know about anchoring anyway well yes I do listen to experience
that's how I built this whole boat but you have to be reasonable which means you have
to reason with me you have to listen to my arguments and refute them if you can do that
yeah you're going to win me over if you can't ah
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you know why do storms always show up at 2 A.M because it's 2 A.M I've been on anchor
watch and I sat two anchors tonight I'm really happy with the way they worked out let me
show you I got quiet all of a sudden it's only blowing 21 miles an hour it was kicking
40. so all that's quickly like back there is the day before but this one is today and
it started off you know coming out of the East and it slowly cut around then when a
strong piece passed over us we just swung over real quick and we straightened our chain
out and I'm sure that's what happened but see there's one anchor and there's the other
one there that's our primary anchor this line here is this is me backing up so I can drop
that anchor there and this is me getting back over to where I was so that's that's Dragon
chain and everything so this anchor here has a short piece of chain on it about 40 feet
and this one here has a 120 feet on it so that uh line worked really well because I
use amp steel and so it floated and just stayed above the other anchor so it didn't trip it
and we rode around over the top of it and I tightened it up as we came around all night
long so no I think it's over with pretty much we've got another about an hour and the winds
will settle back down they already are it's only 22 now I've been doing all night it's
going out about every 30 45 minutes and taking up the slack on that second anchor as we started
coming around to it so now we should be right on it so I'm gonna go out and check it one
more time
it's all good and tight good and tight you know it's funny it's almost as if the uh the
steady wind is coming from One Direction and when it gusts it's coming from another 31
miles an hour now because we're actually going back around uh toward the north a little bit
now so the wind can't make up a spine you know I feel real good about it because I know
this bottom out here is this really heavy clay and our anchors dig in beautifully to
it you know a different bottom with sand or something like that I wouldn't trust it nearly
as much so the other thing to do is you know as I've already filled the fuel tank and tested
the engine and check the oil and all that so if needed it be I could have turned the
engine on and put it in gear and idled into it while it was blowing that hard but that
wasn't necessary it blew 40 mile an hour once while we were on uh Kerr Lake in Oklahoma
has a real short duration this is a little bit longer duration it lasted about 30 minutes
tonight or was above 35. I think we're seeing the last of it so maybe I can get some sleep
another night another storm this one wasn't predict it it's actually not that bad it's
only blowing 20 but it came up really strong and I heard shouting there's no little boat
that came in uh and anchored what is now upwind of me and they apparently were dragging anchor
um so they're they managed to pull it up I guess and get off to the side they're doing
okay it looks like but um you know you worry about them I got on channel 16 and you know
held but no I don't I doubt they're listening to a radio there they seem to be very attentive
to what's going on on their boat there's more reason to get this anchoring business right
open the window maybe you can see them over there yeah they're underway now see that white
light that's their Mass headlight that green is their starboard light so they're moving
downwind yeah they're getting out of here I guess they know where they're going they've
been here a couple times so I think they know the area I'm out on the AFT deck now yeah
they're moving along well
it's got to be engine powering them not just wind they're moving too fast for Just Wind
it's not raining too bad so I'll take you up and show you the anchor here you can see
my chain going out you can see it actually has an arch to it and uh that's what I like
seeing is I know it's not pulled really straight got a lot more chain to come up off the bottom
I only got one acre out but I think that's fine I know I can do well with one anchor
I've done up to 30 mile an hour winds with one in this bottom and I got 120 feet of chain
check on our friends again I don't know where'd they go well I don't scent anymore oh yeah
there he is he turned off his anchor light so you can't see his mask anymore but I can
see you probably can't see it there's really faint green navigation light over there he's
moving along he's going back it down into the channel oh that's a great idea because
once it gets around that corner over there he's got no fetch for the waves and he's got
a wind Shadow from that Peninsula so he'll be fine wow that is a bright light maybe it's
a barge coming through I already tell yet well I'm starting to form some opinions about
anchoring I hope I never turn it into a religion because I meet people that have a religion
about anchoring it's like you know their ways the right way and never shall you depart from
that but you know I took a lot of flack for having amsteel as a road on my anchor and
you know actually that just worked out really well I mean you saw where I had two anchors
I could get that road to come across the other anchor because I know if I slack it it's floating
up on the surface and it's not going to trip that other anchor so you know it's if you
know what you have and work within the limits and the parameters that it sets for you you
can do well with it yeah okay we're gonna turn you off
ER frequency one five seven decimal one megahertz out yeah yeah we know about the deal warning
now so I can turn that back off I don't need to have my radio on because having my radio
on broadcast my AIS and then you know that barge coming through here the the guy will
have to look up to see if I'm moving or not because coming down the Mississippi you know
it's like everybody has a radio on and you have your AIS broadcasting it shows up on
our our transceiver and so that push boat over there will see me pop up on his um AIS
system and it'll give him a warning because I'm kind of in his path but I'm an anchor
and I have an anchor light on so turn the radio off and he doesn't have to pay attention
to you know is this guy out here with his AIS is he actually moving or not which direction
is he actually heading and all that so it's just it eliminates him needing to check in
on me that was the thing when we were going down the Mississippi we had all these boats
you know we checked every one of them and a lot of times they're you know speed over
ground is zero and they're pushed into the shore but they have the radio on so we take
the time to check them so you know it doesn't mean that they were doing it wrong it just
means they're probably only in there for an hour or two and they're not going to bother
turning the radio off and they need a radio to communicate with other people but I don't
and I have an anchor light and I'm anchored so I keep my radio off it keeps my AIS off
though these guys don't have that beep beep beep and the alert comes up and here's a boat
so they can just see that I'm anchored and ignore me you know back to this anchoring
thing is when it comes to anchoring I think you got to take into consideration where you
are whether the boats are around you you know do you have one anchor out too are you going
to stay down there for a while with it you know that's the other thing oh you need a
swivel on it well yeah if you're gonna stay there for you know weeks where you're going
to spin around it not reset your anchor now maybe a swivel would work well but you know
I sit here I go back and forth once a day I don't need a swivel I pulled up my anchor
and I've never seen it twisted more than twice over the whole length of the chain which is
just just not a big deal so you know every moving part is a part they can wear and swivels
can wear so I'm not a big fan of them and I may change my mind later on but I think
that's really the whole thing you know it's like anchoring is kind of like politics and
religion you have to be open to listening to other ideas and evaluating how well they'll
fit your needs um not dictating to others what they should be doing or shouldn't be
doing oh cool Look Who's Back [Music] well that's it for this video I hope you enjoyed
it and uh you know yeah I'm a heretic next time maybe we'll talk about propane tanks
Down Below in the storage lockers I got to get to building a silk wrench here see you
all later oh what'd you make today send us a photo of your creation we want to see it
it's inspirational send it to SV Seeker ymail.com [Music] [Applause]
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