Anchor recommendations....?

That was a good point scara made about having a tyre in the rope while towing. Particularly if you are towing another boat in a following sea, where the towed boat runs ahead on the back of the swell and the rope goes slack, only to snap tight when the towed boat loses way again. A tyre, or better still a sodding great weight (couple of 56lb weights or an anchor will do in a pinch) in the middle of the rope (it keeps a bit of tension in the tow rope at all times) avoids the snap every time the tow comes taut again. Gets rid of that sickening lunging and saves a lot of wear and tear on the tow points of both boats, which gets really annoying after a few hours, trust me...

Just make sure the weight is heavy and well enough connected that it doesn't come flying out of the water when the line tightens, breaks off and lands in the boat under tow.

Hi Lads,
I use the Bruce and find it very good for all types of ground, also keep a fold up for the back up too. I find the Alderney ring and buoy method brilliant at any depth, especially for the deep wrecks. The one thing that I would like to say is I use it from the bow and not a cleat on the stern. I steam at a 45 degree angle away from the anchor to keep the anchor rope away from the prop. The reason I use it from the bow is if the anchor dose get stuck on the bottom it will only spin you around from the bow. As using it from the stern may cause you to get swamped! Especially with small boats. Just something to think about.

Cruical point there Nev. The anchor rope should never be tied off a stern cleat. It it can be useful to run the rope behind the cleat to keep the rope away from the prop. When an anchor gets stuck it's a hairy experience that should not be compounded by having the boat turned by the stern.

tried out the CQR on Saturday Jim but did get quite a bit of dragging going on. The weather was awful with a very srong chop on the water. We were out off Carlingford Lough and the fishing was lousy but i think like you were saying it was down to the chain being too short. How long a chain do you use on your CQR? We were using the one from the Danforth which normally gives no trouble with that anchor.

I'm using the CQR anchor as well one thing I have noticed is you have to get the amount of slack chain just right between the front and rear shackle points, to short and its pulling on the back and won't trip out and the other way get it to long and it's easy to get tangled on the way down - resulting in dragging the anchor (fairly sure that's what the problem was the other week Col)
One other safety point on the Alderney method is to be very careful if you have not let a lot of rope out and the rope angle is quite steep, better to let more rope out before setting off, its to easy to loose sight of the bouy.
Sean,

I usualy tie a 18" piece of plastic pipe onto rope after dropping the bouy, then let out another 10' or so , this keeps the bouy in veiw at all times
Steve

Luke,
We use about 12 feet of heavy chain (must measure the the size for you). SeanP is correct when he talks of "free chain" between front and rear. You must have enough that the anchor can swing from side to side. If it goes down unable to swing you will pull.

Are you anchoring on mad tides? We can get 6knts at East Ferry and we generally have no problem anchoring here.

Jim

Were probably usinig 6 ft of chain that i suppose could be a bit heavier. The tide was a full neap on Saturday but there was a vile sharp wind up to F6 blowing into the Lough which even after we had ran back to the Lough stirred up trouble in there too! It was a bad day for fishing but a good day to test the anchor :P. Looking forward to heading down your way. I think our next venture South will be to Kilmore. Got a couple of spots i want to give a good shot at from my own boat down there and maybe finally bag me a propper conger :twisted:

hi lads,i have bought the bruce anchor,chain etc,does anyone know where i can buy one of these alderney rings,or are they just made for the job by the users,i prusume they must be galavinised,or can anyone tell me what they use,thanks.dezzer........................

Howya Dezzer,

We use a stainless ring (glavo won't do). Our ring is left on our rope all the time. We attach our bouy with a sanp ring when we are going to retrieve.

There are a few different options. The ANKA YANKA is heavily advertised in mags. http://www.ankayanka.com/

If you can get somebody to make you a stainless ring about 6" in diameter it will do the job perfectly.

Jim.

jim,once again thanks for your help,had a stainless steel ring made today 6" diameter with 8mm steel by tad engineering in kilkenny,no problem to them,8 euro,big looking ring,hopefully it will do the job,dezzer......

Nice one Jim, just got back from Kilmore Key where we were anchored up over some rough reef using the CQR and the alderney method. No problem retrieving it! Gives you serious confidence anchoring over a reef. Still no luck on the conger front though... after hearing about Roberts weekend down your way on the Conger front we really are going to have to consider making a trip. Had a kick ass Tope in Courtown though on the way home on Sunday though that made up for it... :shock:

We, like many others, used go down the switching anchors route. Cheapo grapple for rock and a separate sand anchor. We have used Fishermans, CQR, Delta and Bruce. The Delta was a super anchor. When we lost that one and went to replace it I nearly had a heart attack when I saw the price. We then bought the CQR. At first we were not impressed until we changed to a heavier chain. Superb performance now.

The CQR holds brilliantly on rock. One time in ten the anchor may trip on retrieve. I would stress that we are bouying the anchor up, this eliminates the huffing, puffing, farting and grunting. When you lost your anchor were you bouying it up or pulling?

Jim you have me wondering now about anchoring over a rocky reef, I've so far always stuck to anchoring over clean ground, this summer we shall be giving it a go though, i made up a grapple anchor a while ago but i can see storing it on the boat until its needed is going to be a pain, i would not have dared put my main anchor down on the snaggy stuff - have you never had any close shaves where the chain or the anchor get snagged and wont budge? i even had a length of cheap polyprop rope i was going to use with the grapple but that's another bucket taking up floor space. I notice from the pic above you have a carbine hook for attaching the warp to the chain that looks real handy as well - never any problems with that method i guess?
Cheers Sean,

We use a 5kg Bruce anchor with an Alderney ring running thru a roller on the bow, the line passes back along the starboard side thru split rings around a cleat and into a large plastic storage box. This setup allows us to recover the rope without having to lean out the forward hatch but still acts as though the anchor was made off at the bow.
When recovering the anchor we head off to port at first and then come around clockwise in a large circle, this prevents the rope getting caught up in the prop. The anchor is floating there caught in the Aldereny ring waiting to be hauled up over the starboard side and into its bed in the plastic box.
We use strong cable-ties for the breakout and find thes do the job well.

Jim, while I'm happy with the setup I'm not really that happy with the performance of the Bruce anchor, she has dragged a couple of times on me while in a heavy swell/very strong run, I might give your CQR one a go.

I've attached some small photos of our setup and will happly mail anyone who would like a look at the larger photos.

Damien

[dtsacs]

We use a 5kg Bruce anchor with an Alderney ring running thru a roller on the bow, the line passes back along the starboard side thru split rings around a cleat and into a large plastic storage box. This setup allows us to recover the rope without having to lean out the forward hatch but still acts as though the anchor was made off at the bow.
When recovering the anchor we head off to port at first and then come around clockwise in a large circle, this prevents the rope getting caught up in the prop. The anchor is floating there caught in the Aldereny ring waiting to be hauled up over the starboard side and into its bed in the plastic box.
We use strong cable-ties for the breakout and find thes do the job well.

Jim, while I'm happy with the setup I'm not really that happy with the performance of the Bruce anchor, she has dragged a couple of times on me while in a heavy swell/very strong run, I might give your CQR one a go.

I've attached some small photos of our setup and will happly mail anyone who would like a look at the larger photos.

Damien

You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.

Last edited by dtsacs on Thu Jun 22, 2006 11:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Sean,
Never any problems, the anchor will trip-out every now and then. Problems can occur (with any anchor) if you are fishing over low water or there is a change in wind direction and the boat swings around. Better to re-anchor in this (not oft happening) situation. The carbine is handy. I think we use them as a throw back to the days that we used to change anchors! The only "problem" is sometimes the carbine closes on the Alderney ring while retrieving. Not really a problem as the the chain just hangs off the bouy.

Damien,
Nice pics, I like the ring on the side of the cuddy. Tidy!
We use our front hatch because we have an anchor/warp well in the bow. It's very neat as there's no rope on the deck.
We also have a Bruce (7kg) but prefer the CQR.
You seem to have plenty chain. Could you have dragged due to having too little rope out? Big run/swell: more rope out, better angle, less lift on the chain? Other than that I dunno. Heavier anchor? Heavier chain?

Jim

[SeanP]

Cheers Jim,
I'll give it a go.
Sean,

Last edited by SeanP on Sun Jun 25, 2006 3:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.

One last thing to add to this lads. I too have a bow locker for my anchor and rope etc. but when you have 600ft of rope it can and always does get into a right knot no matter how carefully you try to store it. I am interested to hear peoples views on how they tackle this problem. The system i have devised is to coil the rope up in sections and then cable tie it off so it can't get up to any mischief and then do the next bit of coil and then the next etc. This means i only have to release the amount of rope i need at the time and prevents any messing and screaming obsenaties when trying to get anchored! :twisted: . Also it stores the rope away well. The Raider has a very large anchor well from what i see (not too sure how big these are on other boats as a comparrison) and easily accomadates the 600ft of rope, CQR anchor, Danforth anchor and two sets of chain without agetting any of it into a mess when i use this cable tie system. Does anyone have a better system than this that i'm missing out on? the only down side is you use a fair few cable ties. :lol: :lol: :lol:

just wondering if anyone can tell me, if a 2.5kg bruce would be enough to hold a strikliner mainly in the estuary. at the moment we use a 5kg which holds perfect only thing is its not ours and if a smaller one would work it would be much handier.
any suggestions? has anyone much expierance with small anchors?

Coiled rope is likely to foul up so what I usually do is to not coil it, just lay it down on itself. It's difficult to describe, but when I used to work pots and had miles of rope to manage, I'd grab the rope and throw it behind me in a loop, then throw the next loop and so on, covering the area behind me and gradually building it up in layers, trying to criss-cross the layers a bit - you don't have to have them at right angles or anything.

What I will say is that this will work best for rope that is 'dead' - ie has little springiness - like a braided dacron etc rather than that horrible blue polypropylene stuff. It also behaves a lot better when the rope is 'coiled' wet.

If you absolutely have to coil rope, there are 4 tricks to it.
1. Twist the rope as you form the loops so you don't get figure of eights.
2. Every rope will have a natural coil size that suits it, neither too big a coil nor too small - generally the heavier the rope, the bigger the coil size.
3. Keep the number of loop in your coil low - I never have more than six loops in my hand.
4. Make sure you throw the coil the right way down - ie so that the last loop you added to the coil is uppermost.

Also, never walk or step on coiled rope, or dump stuff on top of it as it pushes the coils through each other and is a recipie for tangles.

Many people make the start of their own problems the day they buy and open a coil of rope. Rope generally comes coiled so that you take the rope off the centre of the coil, not the outside. That'll twist it. And every coil will have a top and a bottom. If you are removing the rope from the new coil properly, it'll have very little twist.

Even having done that, I always would have uncoiled the rope fully and then pulled it around a post a few times to take out the last few twists before using it to hang nets or whatever.

Getting rope to behave is not as simple as you might think......

At the risk of sounding all Zen about it, you have to imagine what the rope 'wants' to do as it is pulled out of your heap of coils - it wants the next bit to move to have an unobstructed route to travel.....