Tuesday, February 18, 2020

Snubber for the Anchor

New Snubber for the Anchor

We bounced around at anchor last weekend in Lake Boca during the night of the Chili Cookooff, so much that our anchor got dislocated and we drifted towards the other boats in the fleet. Time to look at how to reduce the risk of anchor dragging - again!

Quick overview: We typically let out about 75' of anchor scope which in Lake Boca is about 7:1.
The boat's anchor roller is about 4' off the water and mostly it's about 7' deep when we anchor at low tide. We try to find 7' depths as we have a keel that sticks down 5' 7" from the flat water surface and Lake Boca has a typical tidal change of about 2', so we look for 7' at low tide and 9' at high tide.

A couple of years ago, I made an Anchor Snubber that was 30' long and it uses about 3' of rope for the knot that attaches to the anchor chain (I use a rolling hitch)

After researching online, it seems the 30' is too short! When attached to the anchor, it's 15' legs are only 12' long due to the knot on the anchor chain. Online research showed that our boat, 34' long, should have a snubber of about 28' in length.

Ideally it would be shaped like the letter Y with the upper two legs of the Y being 25' and the lower leg being 3' and a pendant to connect the snubber to the anchor chain of about 2' long.

I ordered Nylon 3 Strand Anchor/Rigging Line 5/8" x 100' White line from Amazon by Maple Leaf Ropes - $60, it came with a single stainless steel thimble pre-spliced into one end.

Another purchased that benefited from Amazon Prime. Ordered Wednesday evening and arrived Saturday.
















Eye Splices in the two long ends
Step 1 was to cut a length of 28' plus the extra required for a cleat sized loop on the other end from the existing thimble. I spliced a loop on that end to fit around a 10" cleat on the deck.

Step 2. I cut a 25' length plus the extra required for a 10" loop at one end and a 6" inline splice at the other. I spliced the 10" loop in one end.












Inline Splice joining the short side to the long side

Step 3. I spliced the two lines together to form the Y shape, about 3' from the lower eye thimble.


















The Completed Snubber
and Pendant + Spare


Today, I made up the Pendant from 1/4" 12 strand Dyneema line. That should have a breaking strain of about 17,000 lbs. It's about 4' long with loops in each end to fit over the bolt in a shackle to connect it to the Thimble in the Snubber

I made a second pendant, just in case. 

Next I'll make a mesh bag to hold it all so that it doesn't get snagged up on the Anchor Locker aboard Eximius












Didn't take long - another thanks to my Navy training.

That's me at 15 in St. Vincent's Rope training classroom - 5th from the left back row.

That was 56 years ago! Wow!

Wonder how many of my class mates are still around ?



See you on the Water - hopefully securely anchored! 


Friday, February 14, 2020

HISC - Chili Cookoff 2020

Hillsboro Inlet Sailing Club - Chili Cookoff 2020

We headed up to Lake Boca for the Chili Cookoff February 8th.

By Saturday morning we had loaded the boat except for the last few items (Coffee Pot which we use at home and Electronics - camera etc which we don't leave on the boat.

Easy transit from the Dock to SandBar Park, then I setup the Action camera and took this Video.

Hope you enjoy it. Let me know.


Part II will come later.

The Chili cookoff was a great event, plenty of chili, Margaritas and friendly conversations with some great club members.

See you for part II later.

Paul