Posts

Showing posts from May 3, 2015

Obsessing About Anchor Rodes

Buying a mattress is about as dull, and opaque, a consumer choice as any of us has to make.  You can't take your friends for a ride in (on) it, however much you like the color, it is quickly obscured, and you really can't test it out... in spite of the fact that you're going to spend a third of your life on it for a long time. Ground tackle is like that.  You might get some cred for your choice of anchor (probably not), and every sailor loves to debate the virtues of chain and lay and scope and flukes I purchased a new anchor , and obsessed for a time about the rest of the ground tackle.  My existing rode was a mere 200 feet of 1/2" triple strand nylon, and twice that will be barely enough for some of the more extreme Inside Passage anchorages. Conventional wisdom suggests an eighth inch of rode diameter for each 9 feet of boat length (for a working anchor). That would be 3/8" line for Ripple, but 3/8" is hard to grip and haul, especially with 50 lbs o