Center: The thimble on the three-strand nylon is an open stainless steel design. Not ideal, it would be better to use a welded or closed, galvanized thimble.
Below: The chain stopper horizontal pin and pawl are removed when passing the shackle through and replaced when the nylon is back in the chain locker.
On board Beetle, with her 8-foot draft, I like to anchor in 30 feet of water when possible. This often puts me way out on the fringe of the fleet, and that’s fine—there’s a reason Beetle carries a dinghy with an outboard motor. Sometimes I can’t find 30 feet of water, and the bottom is much further away—150-foot depth is my maximum so far.
The general anchoring scope recommendations I’ve read call for 3:1 or 4:1 on all chain and 5:1 to 7:1 (better) on a short length of chain plus nylon rode. The goal is to present a horizontal load to the anchor, and in general, more scope is better, provided the boat won’t swing into anything. Beetle‘s primary setup is a Rocna anchor shackled to 250 feet of hi-test chain, and I aim for between 3:1 and 4:1 scope in settled conditions. This has worked well to a maximum of 70 feet of water. By “settled conditions,” I mean winds less than 30 knots, a good holding bottom substrate and minimal fetch that keeps wind-driven chop under three feet. In stronger conditions, I will increase scope or move the boat.
The chain is attached to an additional 300 feet of nylon three-strand rode, which is used for deeper water. I use a shackle, as opposed to a rope-to-chain splice, for the nylon-to-chain connection because it’s easily reattached after end-for-ending the chain or after removing end-of-chain links that have become worn. The chain passes through a chain-stopper and the windlass has a gypsy and a capstan; with a bit of planning, it is straightforward to shift the rode between the gypsy and capstan, despite the added bulk of thimble and shackle in the rope-to-chain connection.
The first step in anchoring is to check the charts for bottom type, particularly when anchoring deeper than I can safely reach with SCUBA gear (anything greater than 130 feet). Ideally, I’d like to see S (sand) or M (mud) and avoid R (rocks) or Bo (boulders), as I don’t want the chain to get wrapped up in big rocks. And dropping the anchor into a known wreck is no fun at all. All this is normal stuff. The difference is that in deeper water, there may be no way to retrieve the anchor if it becomes fouled—so I’m extra careful in chart-checking.
Assuming the location is good, I’ll find a particular spot, stop the boat there and wait a bit to see if there’s current or wind moving the boat around. I don’t drop the anchor free-fall by releasing the gypsy clutch. It’s dangerous to have chain flying by and particularly bad when the chain leaps off the gypsy during a free fall. Instead, I use the windlass to power down the anchor and chain in a controlled drop, which is slow. Beetle‘s Maxwell VW 2200 lowers chain at 60 feet/minute. Several minutes can pass before the anchor gets to the bottom, so I plan ahead for drift as necessary.
With everything prepared, I check the shackle’s wire mousing, verify the depth on the sounder and then start the anchor down. After hitting the bottom, I slowly pay out more chain while watching the boat’s drift—I’d prefer the chain to lay out across the bottom rather than land in a big pile on top of the anchor. When the shackle to the nylon comes up, I lock the chain with the chain stopper to unload the windlass, wrap the nylon three-strand around the capstan, take up on the windlass to release the stopper and continue letting out the nylon by hand, easing it around the capstan just like easing a loaded jib sheet on a winch.
I normally set the nylon to be just less than the depth. In a 140-foot anchorage, I’ll put out 130 feet of nylon, hopefully keeping the nylon above sharp things on the bottom that could cut the rode. All told, I have 250 feet chain + 130 feet nylon = 380 feet out, for a total scope of 380/140 = 2.7:1, which is less than my preferred 3:1-4:1. As water depth increases, less scope is required to maintain a reasonably horizontal load on the anchor, and I have all the weight (chain) on the bottom. It will take a fair bit of pull to lift all 250 feet of chain in deep water as compared to all 120 feet I’d use in 30 feet of water. That’s valid until the anchor line goes bar-tight and all catenary is lost, at which point scope becomes critical. If more scope were needed, I could let out more nylon, and if it got really bad, I could add the spare anchor rode to the nylon for an additional 300 feet, not something I’ve had to do—yet.
It’s relatively straightforward to stay in deeper anchorages by adding a long length of nylon to the chain and working out the transition in the nylon-to-chain connection. It’s fun to visit anchorages that aren’t visited that often!
