New Anchor and Chain

On Friday afternoon, I left the house in its final stages of preparation for sale. We had more painting going on, roof cleaning, a few remaining piles of junk, and decoration touches being done. My task was to drive my small Toyota pickup down to Wilmington and pick up our new anchor (88 lbs) and chain (600 lbs).

At West Marine, had already put out the new anchor wrapped in plastic when I arrived. The anchor was huge! I’m sure the expression of surprise on my face was genuine – so I said: “This will be way too big for my dinghy! I ordered the 8 lb anchor!” (At this point, I should have a photo to show you, but I was so focused on the task at hand I forgot to take photos. Sorry!)
Next, they had a couple of guys use a special heavy-duty dolly, and a forklift to pick up the barrel-sized container of chain. Once it was on the truck, I tried helping one of the guys move the barrel slightly to center it near the front of the bed. It was VERY hard to move. I put the anhor next to it also at the front (to prevent sliding during braking).

The drive to the marina was uneventful. Once there, I put the anchor in a cart and took it to Tahina. Rather than lifting it by myself (it was evening at this point), I left it by the boat on the side dock. I left the tub of chain in the truck. I wasn’t worried anyone would try moving it. Later, my friend Gerard arrived. He came to help with the tasks on Saturday.

The next morning, we worked first on getting the chain from the truck. We wanted to be ready at high tide at 8:15, so the ramp to the dock would be nearly level. We got three carts, and put equal lengths of chain in each (by measuring ~130 feet in each one). We then got someone to help and took all three carts to Tahina with no problems.

Next, we took Tahina out of the dock to turn it around. Had a bit of an issue leaving the dock due to a north wind, the width of Tahina, and the narrow slip. Once out of the slip, I held position while we got the lines and fenders in order. Then we nudged our way in bow-to. This was done so we could remove the old anchor and chain, and then install the new from the dock.

We spent several minutes getting the boat tied off since this arrangement was unfamiliar to me. Then, we prepared the operation. Removing the anchor and old chain was straightforward – thanks to our windlass. The old rode also included rope as well. I planned to keep the rope rode, so we cut off the end spliced to the chain. Then we attached another rope feeder through the chain feed. We attached this rope to the new chain and pulled it back through to the windlass.

We ended up having to remove the rope/chain divider in our anchor well. and flaking the bottom of the new chain to make sure we had enough depth for shallow anchor deployments. But, by shortly after lunch we completed the job!

My new goal is to make sure I remember to take photos for any significant operation like this. Staying focused on a task is a good quality, but it will be important to have good photos to share when I tell stories like this. Here are a few photos of the new anchor and chain (I had one accidental shot of the anchor while it was on the dock when I went up the mast – for another job – and took some straight-down photos). The rest of the photos were taken this morning.

My next post will be about the other tasks we did on Saturday related to the SSB installation preparations. And, I have some nice photos, because I went up the mast with the camera.