Tradewinds Sailing Blog

Sailing ABC  by Marianne Wheeler

A is for Anchor – Anchoring, VI

Anchors hold a boat best when they are allowed to dig in and stay flat on the bottom while the rode runs far back at a flat angle of pull to the bow of the boat. The longer the rode, the more horizontal it can tug on the anchor keeping it down and buried. A short rode will make a steep angle of pull to the bow and tug on the anchor vertically, pulling it out and letting it drag.

The angle at which the boat pulls on the anchor is determined by scope, the ratio of the length of rode let out to the distance from the boat’s bow to the seabed. Usually, a ratio of 7:1 is recommended for anchoring overnight in normal conditions.

To figure a 7:1 scope, add the depth of the water to the height of the bow above the water and multiply by seven. Estimate the scope including the tidal differences for the time at the anchorage.

4:1 scope may be enough for a short stop if the wind keeps down.

With all chain rode a 5:1 scope is sufficient for anchoring overnight in normal conditions.

My friend Salty Clay says it’s a good idea to have more scope than not enough. In this case, more is better. When in doubt, pay it out and don’t be caught in a crowded cove with your anchor up.

Sailing ABC  by Marianne Wheeler

A is for Anchor – Anchoring, V

Cruising boats that lie at anchor for long periods of time and that are likely to anchor in rocks or reefs often use an all-chain rode. Many modern, larger boats do as well.

One good thing about all-chain rode is that the weight of the chain increases holding power by burying into the bottom and staying down flat so that the anchor remains parallel to the sea bed. Another good thing is that using all-chain avoids chafe on the rode as the boat is swinging, tugging and jerking on the anchor.

On the other hand, hundreds of feet of chain are quite heavy when stored on board and that affects the sailing performance of a boat and sometimes even its safety. My friend Salty Clay says that the weight of the chain, usually carried in the bow, front-loads and disturbs the boat’s balance and handling. Chain is also much harder to haul back on board and may require a windlass, a device that makes life at the bow much easier when weighing anchor.

For day sailing, the ideal rode is often a combination of rope and chain. A length of chain, maybe 10 or 15 feet between the shank and the nylon rope, helps the anchor dig in and stay down horizontally. It takes the brunt of merciless chafing on jagged ground while the nylon rope stretches above it and nicely absorbs shock loads on the boat.

Recently, during the Clipper Round the World Race, a person fell overboard while changing a sail. Why he wasn’t tethered to the boat and why he did not have a personal EPIRB, we do not know. In all such incidents, the accounts are sketchy, and often written by reporters whose closest encounter with the sea is a volleyball game on the beach. Moreover, I am against criticizing the decisions of the skipper when I wasn’t aboard and have only third-hand knowledge of the circumstances. They could have had a spinnaker up, for example; we don’t know all the details. In the end, the rescue was successful.
That said, I thought it might be a good occasion to review why we do not teach the method of COB recovery allegedly used in this instance. The skipper was quoted as saying, “We have a well-rehearsed procedure to mark the position, stop racing and engage the engine.” I have heard this same method recommended in more than one national sailing publication, and I’m certain that some of our students consider this their fall-back option if they don’t quite remember how to do a quick-stop or a figure eight. So why don’t we teach it that way?
Reportedly, it took the Clipper boat 90 minutes to pick up the victim. He survived, although hypothermic, because, fortunately, he was wearing a dry suit. I recommend that my students set 90 seconds—one-sixtieth of this time—as an achievable goal for returning to the victim. If you take the time to find and activate the GPS’ MOB function, then fumble with getting the engine going and dousing the main, it is almost certain you will have lost sight of the victim. The chances of this are even greater if you are the only person left aboard. Driving under power, the boat will not be maneuverable in a breeze unless you douse the main, so it’s not really an option to leave it up. Getting it down takes a lot of time, especially if you want to secure it so it is not all over the deck for another crew to slip on and find their way overboard. You’ve also created two new hazards: one, in the chaos, you may have left a line in the water, which will find its way into the prop, vastly complicating the situation; and two, the Coast Guard keeps statistics of people getting killed or injured by the prop during the attempt to pick them up, and it’s not a pretty number.
In a seaway, the quick-stop method may be the best, although the figure eight is preferred by some. These must be practiced not merely until you think you understand them because in panic mode your “understanding” will vanish. They should be practiced until they are completely automatic and you can’t not do them right. In either maneuver, you’ll return to the victim quickly without losing sight of them. The figure eight, if done properly, will take you back to the COB even if you can’t see them. Don’t delude yourself that starting the engine will make the situation simpler. It won’t. By all means press the MOB button on the GPS. But if your man-overboard practice is up to speed, you shouldn’t need it.

Sailing ABC  by Marianne Wheeler

A is for Anchor – Anchoring, IV

Ground tackle, the anchor with the anchor rode work together to keep a boat from getting underway without its skipper at the helm. The length and strength of rode required are dictated by the size of the boat and by different anchoring situations. A 35 foot sail boat may carry 250 feet of rode for its 25 lb. anchor.

Mostly, three-strand twisted or double braided nylon rope is used for anchor rode, because of its strength and elasticity. Nylon can gradually stretch up to a third of its length under load, which is particularly helpful when the boat surges in choppy waves in the anchorage. The anchor rode on a 35 foot boat may have holding loads of 1000 lbs. in normal conditions and more than two times as much in stormy weather.

Rope is relatively easy to store and light to handle, but it can chafe and break, or deteriorate from dirt, salt, and sun.

My friend Salty Clay says it’s a good idea to regularly check for wear and tear on the anchor rode. When hanging on the hook for more than enjoying a lunch, avoid continued stress on points where the rope chafes on deck – the nip on the rode – by easing out a little more line from time to time.

When things go wrong, there usually isn’t any warning and it happens very fast! Take for example a line wrapped around a shaft and/or prop. Take it from personal experience; there is no warning at all, until the motor stops.

COOL goes a long way to stopping that particular problem. We all check the Coolant and Oil each day before leaving the slip, but how diligent are you with Overboard Lines?

Here is a quick tip to help. Get off the boat and walk all of the way around it. I know … too easy, right.

Here’s a bit more detail. First and foremost, don’t delegate, do this yourself! Start at the stern, at the end of the dock finger. Look for any line in the water or being used to secure the boat to the dock. Now, walk all the way around to the stern on the other side checking for lines the whole time. As you pass the dock box, flip off the AC breaker. Remove the spring lines and lay them carefully along the dock (a spring line may be long enough to foul a prop if it ends up in the water). Disconnect the AC Power cord and stow it safely on the dock. There should now only be four lines remaining, port and starboard, bow and stern.

While doing your walk around, start thinking LOT … but that is a story for another day.

Sailing ABC  by Marianne Wheeler

A is for Anchor – Anchoring, III

Most anchors are made of strong steel (so they don’t float) and have points called flukes that dig into the bottom or grab onto rocks. They also have a shank between the flukes and the rode which helps the flukes to dig in. Often, there is a horizontal bar called stock that keeps the flukes from twisting out of the bottom as the boat swings from side to side while sitting at anchor. Or, instead of a stock, a shank may swivel over the flukes.

My friend Salty Clay says at the very least a sailor should know what anchor and ground tackle a boat carries and how to deploy and retrieve it safely.

Before leaving the dock check where the anchor is located, how many are on board and determine the type of anchor(s) and rode.

Is the rode rope or chain, or both? Is it ready to pay out smoothly? Is it attached to the anchor securely? Is the bitter end attached to the boat? Is it attached in a way that it can be released in a hurry, if necessary? How long is the rode and are there depth markers on it?

“You may not operate boats under power or sail between sunset and sunrise.”  The sentence in the club manual is such a simple statement, and yet there is so much confusion over it.

It’s March 21, 2014, and I just received a call in the office that got me to thinking.  The questions asked were “What time is sunset tonight?” and “What time do I need to leave Pier 39 to get back in time?”

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to give a good answer off the top of my head to either question.  The answers require a bit of research and planning.  An effort that I recommend each captain (yes, that’s you and me when we take a boat out) complete prior to leaving the slip for a day’s sailing.

According to the Tide Tables (yes, it’s there … look at the last page) sunset on March 20 was 1922.  On March 25, it will be 1926.  A bit of simple math in my head tells me that sunset today will be approximately 1923 … as “observed from sea level at the Golden Gate Bridge.”  That’s a great starting point; however, if you arrive back in Marina Bay at 1923, it will be well past sunset.  First, Marina Bay is about 7 miles east of the gate, so the sun goes down earlier.  Second, and more important, there are mountains that are well above sea level between Marina Bay and the horizon.  Sunset, according to the club rules, is when the sun goes down behind those mountains.  Today, it was more like 1910.  As far as the time to leave Pier 39, its 8.3 miles from Pier 39 to Marina Bay.  At an average speed of 5 knots, that’s 1:40.  However, what are the currents doing?  With a flood it may take less than that.  While ebbing, you can easily add an extra 45 minutes to the trip.  Max flood today was 2.8 knots at 1452.  By 1600 to 1700, there won’t be much current to help, so 1:40 still seems about right.  Leaving at 1700 to 1715 should work.

What about wind.  During normal wind conditions on the bay, you are going to be in the “shadow” of Angel Island for a good portion of the trip.  More than once, I have found myself going backwards because I was sailing slower than the current was flowing.   Motoring at 5 knots wouldn’t be a problem.  Sailing might require extra time.  If you average 2 knots speed over ground, 1:40 just became 4:10 minutes, and you needed to be underway before 1500!

A good skipper takes all of this into consideration and plans accordingly.

Note from Matt: Consider clean-up time as well. As a general rule, to stow a boat properly it takes about 1 minute per foot of boat per day that you spent on it. When we have one of those rare conversations with members about not cleaning up after themselves properly, it’s quite often because they tried to do it in the dark!

In general, I am quite a fan of archaic sailing arts. Some of them I can even justify under the heading of safety, like knowing how to use a sextant. But for practical reasons, I hesitate to recommend splicing braided line. I realize that synthetic braided lines are not really ancient; but splicing is.
The argument for an eye splice versus a bowline often revolves around breaking strength. The bowline may reduce the line’s strength by 50%, the splice, say 25%. But let’s get real. We never choose running rigging based on breaking strength. What we want is low stretch. A polyester halyard that we might finish with an eye splice will have a tensile strength of around 10,000 pounds on a 40-foot boat. A splice will reduce this to somewhere around 7,500 pounds, and a bowline to 5,000 pounds. A common safety factor is 5/1 although let’s go to 10/1 to be conservative. My wife will surely be telling me to cut back on the beer well before I reach 500 pounds, so a trip up the mast in the bosun’s chair causes little fear, even hanging by a bowline. If you’re paranoid about that knot holding your life in the balance, then put a couple of hitches in the tail or seize it to the standing part. But if you’re really that worried about whether a bowline will hold, perhaps it’s time you learn how to tie one.
There is another issue with putting an eye splice at the working end of your halyards. It’s a good idea to switch your halyards end for end once in awhile to avoid all the strain at masthead sheave being in one place forever, which shortens their useful life. Great, so now with the eye splice you have a knobby bit at the hauling end. And of course you have to spend a half hour finding a fid and remembering how to do a splice for the headboard shackle. I have always used a bowline here. You untie the bowline and switch ends, no problema.
Maybe a braided line has parted and you want to splice it back together. This can happen for three reasons I can think of: 1) The line is too small. This is very unlikely. All but extreme sailboats carry running rigging that is quite a bit over-sized. Regular old utilitarian 1/4-inch Sta-Set has a tensile strength of 2350 pounds, which is enough to lift an entire Catalina 22 right out of the water. That is one-quarter-inch line. We use larger lines for sheets and halyards so they’ll be low-stretch and nice on the hands. 2) Chafe. Forget fixing the line; deal with the chafe, or it will break again. 3) It is old. Use it for art projects, like macramé flower pot hangers. It needs to be taken out of service, not repaired.
3-strand laid nylon is used for docklines and anchor rodes for the opposite reason that braided polyester is used for running rigging—because it does stretch, which lessens the shock when wind or waves cause strain. A better case can be made for splicing laid line. Its only a matter of taste, but to me it’s more traditional looking and prettier. There are some places you’ll almost certainly want to use an eye splice on laid line. One is on the thimble for the ground tackle shackle, which rhymes. Another is on the rope-to-chain splice that permits nylon rope to smoothly transition to chain when running through the type of windlass gypsy that accommodates both. Good idea to inspect and refresh these occasionally. Eye splices are also useful on dedicated docklines, as we do on our Tradewinds boats. But I can do anything with a knot that you can with a splice, and then untie it to use for something else. The splice, on the other hand, lives at the end of the rope, making it unsuitable for reeving through a block or padeye, or tying knots.
Now consider the practicalities of repairing laid line with a splice. Say you want to put a splice in an anchor rode after it has chafed through at the bow. Don’t you have bigger problems here? The rest of the line is on the bottom with your anchor where you can’t retrieve it. And your boat is on the rocks. If you think this could happen but because you’re an optimist, you’re confident that you’ll be alert enough to notice the wear before the line parts, then by all means learn the long and short splice to repair the damaged line. But tend to your chafing gear, refresh your rode every, say, fifteen years, and you’ll never need this skill.
On our circumnavigation, we sailed 30,000 miles. I have done the math, and it turns out that it would take 125 years for the typical recreational sailor to do that distance on San Francisco Bay. Since all rope eventually deteriorates in sunlight, you’ll no doubt need to replace your running rigging before then, along with your hips, knees, teeth, and friends. But we left home with Sta-Set sheets and guys and pole topping lifts, and Sta-Set-X halyards, none of which were even new. We came back 27 months later with the same running rigging. I was a bit miffed that I never got to use those brand new spares I carried all the way around the world.
All it takes is a little attention to chafe, and you’ll never have to rummage around in your bosun’s bag for a fid.