Rants & Musings, Anchoring
Index
Mooring Failure, The Loss of Kantele
A Question of Scale
Anchor Angst
Update on Our Thoughts About the Luke Fisherman Anchor
Why We Don't Trust Moorings and Do Trust Anchors
The Truth is Out About Old Style Anchors
Mooring Failure, The Loss of Kantele (John, 02/2010)
On 28th December last year a beautiful Saga 40—an English design not to be confused with this boat—was lost when she went ashore at Sint Eustatius in the eastern Caribbean when a mooring provided for yachts by the local marine park, STENAPA, failed in what looks from the photograph to be benign conditions.
As might be expected, Kantele’s owners blame the mooring provider for the loss and are hoping for compensation; however, the management of the marine park contends that the fault lies with the owners due to the way in which they secured their boat to the mooring.
While our personal sympathies, albeit based on limited information, lie with the owners of Kantele, our purpose here is not to take sides but rather to use this sad incident to warn others of the potential dangers of using loaned or rental moorings, and not for the first time.
The open roadstead at Sint Eustatius is an inherently dangerous place for a boat that is also subject to rapidly increasing and hard to predict ocean swells. It might be logical to assume that moorings provided in such a place would be built to a higher standard than those installed in more sheltered harbours.
STENAPA provides information about their moorings on their web site that includes an unusual instruction that yachts should add their own bow line to the pick up line, rather than cleat the pick up line on the boat. The idea here seems to us to be that the mooring gear alone does not provide sufficient scope to be safe. They also suggest that “During heavy seas, it is recommended to use an anchor as additional support”. The implication to us seems to be that the moorings are not strong enough in and of themselves to survive conditions that often occur at Sint Eustatius.
Bottom line, do not assume that a mooring, even one provided by an established and reputable organization, is up to the job of looking after your boat.
This is not a one-off situation either: Last summer our European Correspondent, Colin Speedie, dragged a mooring after being assured that it was adequate to handle his boat’s size. And, a number of years ago, at Porto Santo Island, with a strong gale coming, we were told by the local authorities that we were not allowed to anchor but had to pick up a mooring and that it was more than adequate to handle Morgan’s Cloud’s 26 tons. An assertion that was quickly withdrawn when we dragged said mooring across the harbour with just 1200 rpm of reverse thrust on our engine.
Over the years we have been invited, more times than I can count, to pick up moorings that upon investigation turned out to be grossly inadequate for our boat size, poorly maintained or, often, both.
In summary, we strongly believe that a properly equipped voyaging boat is generally a lot safer anchored on her own gear than on a mooring. And that goes double for places like Sint Eustatius and Porto Santo Island where the result of a mooring failure is frequently total loss of the boat.
If you do decide to pick up a mooring, particularly in a hazardous place, we suggest that you dive on it to verify its construction yourself or failing that, leave someone aboard the boat at all times.
We keep beating on this drum because the hazard of moorings really makes no sense on a fundamental level, particularly to those new to cruising. After all, you don’t check the supports in a multi-story parking garage before leaving your car there. Nor do you need to check the web site of said parking provider to see if you should chock the wheels of your car and park it half a car length back from the marked parking space to be safe.
Further Information:
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) held an interview with Gary Pittman, owner of Kantele. It makes pretty chilling listening and further reinforces our basic distrust of moorings and preference for our own anchor gear.
The full interview runs 7 minutes. When run from the screen, it seems to cut off halfway through, but if you download it to your computer and then listen, it runs fine.
Reader Comment:
RLW writes [edited for brevity]: Sadly moorings are quickly taking over the Caribbean and having dived on many the quality and maintenance leave something to be desired. Made worse in places like the BVI where, when they come around to take your $20, they also have you sign a paper that says that you absolve them of any responsibility and that you accept responsibility for any damage your boat might cause to other boats or property if their mooring decides to go walkabout. While I see the need in a place like the BVI, with its huge bareboat fleet, for mooring fields, if the BVI is going to go the route of requiring crusiers to use moorings they should also make sure that they keep them up to a standard where accidents like the one described cannot happen.Back to Index
A Question of Scale (Colin Speedie, 09/2009)
This summer will remain in my memory as one for strong winds and great sailing. By the time we reached Scotland in early July we had just about seen the last of the light winds that we had enjoyed in West Cork, and a more mixed regime had set in. No matter—these were ideal conditions to get to know our boat better, and economise on fuel!
Plenty of anchor work, too, and several nights of winds that reached gale force let us test our anchoring system out in the real world. In nearly all circumstances we tend to lie to one big anchor and plenty of chain, and it has never failed us yet. But if we’re expecting really strong winds, in poor shelter, or expect a big wind shift, out will go the second set of gear.
When we planned the boat, we knew that we would have to work out a custom installation to handle the second cable and anchor. There was not enough room in the anchor locker for two sets, and the stemhead and rollers were not ideal to keep a second anchor permanently stowed alongside the bower anchor, a 33kg Rocna with a big rollbar.
So we had an additional tang welded to the deck and had a roller drum fabricated to handle the second cable, to be bolted in place on deck when needed. In normal circumstances this is lashed down in our stowage area forward, and is lifted on deck via the spinnaker halyard when needed. Once in place we can attach whichever anchor we want to the chain (25kg Rocna, Fortress or fisherman) and run it out either under our own power or via the dinghy, and once set up it all works really well.
So when we were preparing for the first big blow of the season we decided to set up the second anchor ready to face the worst of it. Working together in only moderate winds we were amazed at how much time it took to get everything in place and ready to go—well over an hour. Admittedly we hadn’t set it up for over a year, so we were out of practice and there was far too much time spent looking out the right bolts, finding the mousing wire and so on, but it was sobering to think how long it might have taken in wild conditions.
Now we do have a third cable that is simply coiled ready to go for our stern anchor, but it’s a lighter set up, and it wouldn’t be our preferred solution, so it’s going to be back to the drawing board this winter to come up with some effective ways of speeding up the deployment of our second system. And, once again, we were reminded how glad we are that our primary set up is scaled up so much.
Which got me thinking about the perennial question of how much anchor is enough? To my eyes so many owners err on the small side, and I can’t quite understand the logic of it. I know that there are negative cost and weight implications for going for (at least) the next size up from the manufacturer's recommendation, but what else is gained? And when the wind gets up who is glad to be lying to a smaller anchor?
Going up a size offers so many benefits: A heavier anchor will set faster and dig through a hard substrate more effectively. Bigger size means more working surface area for more effective holding, especially with new generation anchors like the Spade and Rocna. And if, as far as our observations are concerned, most boats are nearly always anchored to one set of gear, doesn’t it make the most sense to scale it up, so that when the wind comes up unexpectedly you can face it with confidence and sort out the second set of gear? Running out a second anchor is often far more work than anticipated, and may have to be done in less than ideal conditions. I suspect that’s why so many people put it off if at all possible, and then end up having to set it when conditions are at their worst. Making your primary set-up oversized and bombproof has a lot going for it.
Like
many others I suspect, I suffer from the syndrome called “anchoring insomnia”,
sleeping with one eye open when lying to the hook in remote places—and
rightly so. But I have to say that for me scaling up on our anchor and
gear has had more beneficial effects in curing that affliction than all
the pills in the world would, and so whatever the downsides to heavier
ground tackle, I think they are a price well worth paying.
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Anchor Angst (John, 07/2007)
The other day I was idly paging through the posts on a cruising forum about anchoring and marveling at the level of energy and emotion, not to mention the sheer volume of posts, that this subject seems to elicit. I have to say that my first uncharitable thought was "I have to write about this stuff—that is what I do. But don’t these people have lives."
But then I thought about the act of anchoring a bit more. In what other activity do we go to a location we have never seen before, drop a weird looking contraption into a place we can’t see (at least in most of the places we cruise) and then trust it to keep what is often our home and largest asset safe? To top all this off, we go to sleep, for crying out loud.
Even a big wall climber can at least look at and touch the anchor points holding his or her bivouac before drifting off into dreamland suspended above the abyss—OK, I have no idea how they do that either, but work with me on this.
No wonder we voyaging sailors fixate on anchors and anchoring.
A British Vertue 28 weighs anchor after a rolly night
riding out a near gale at Bjørnøya (Bear Island). No place for anchor angst.
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Update on Our Thoughts About the Luke Fisherman Anchor (John, 05/2007)
Up until we bought our 120lb (55kg) SPADE anchor in 2002, our 150lb Luke Fisherman anchor, that we affectionately call 'Big Bertha', was our anchor of choice in kelp and rocky bottoms like those found in Labrador and Greenland. We had our friend Frank Luke customize it to speed up assembly and kept it on the aft cabin top from where, with practice and using halyards, we could launch and retrieve it at the cost of about 30 minutes of hot sweaty work.
However, since the change to the SPADE, we have not had to set the Luke once, despite having made a voyage to Svalbard, a trans-Atlantic via Iceland and Greenland, and a circumnavigation of Newfoundland, while anchoring about 150 times.
So this begs the question: Do we stick with our original recommendation of “don’t leave home without a Luke Fisherman Anchor”?
First off, I think there may still be a bottom type where the SPADE
would fail but the Luke would succeed. I’m thinking of about a 5 to 10
foot thickness of kelp that would compress under the weight of an anchor
to say 2 feet. Under this there would be rocks imbedded in a thick and
sticky mud—glacial flour generated by glaciers. To get securely anchored
you would need to get a fluke down into the mud, through the kelp and between
the boulders. Even the largest SPADE will only have a maximum fluke penetration
depth of 12 to18 inches and if it does not get to the mud very quickly,
it will then foul with weed balled in between the stock and blade and have
to be retrieved and cleaned before another attempt is made.
The Luke works well in this kind of bottom because it lands immediately with most of its weight on the tip, due to the cross bar, and then has more reach though the weed to get down to the mud. The Luke’s relatively small and pointed fluke will easily separate the weed and dive between the stalks and rocks to get to the mud and it is unlikely to foul due to weed balling. Once an anchor is through all the weed and rocks, the mud is actually very good holding, so that the Luke's relatively small fluke surface area is not a problem.
So I think our new recommendation would be: If heading for Labrador or Greenland, a large Luke is probably a worthwhile investment as a backup to either a SPADE or a Rocna primary. But if the high latitudes are not on the agenda, we would make the spare a second Rocna or SPADE since they will have much better holding in mud or sand than the Luke due to their much larger fluke area for a given weight.
On Morgan’s Cloud we have kept
our Luke, but moved it below.
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Why We Don't Trust Moorings and Do Trust Anchors (John, 2007)
People are often surprised and even a little hurt when we turn down their kind offers to use their moorings in harbours we visit. They are even more perplexed as they watch us go to the trouble of anchoring outside the mooring field, often in a more exposed location. Here is an example of why:
Recently I have been trying to get a mooring put down in a sheltered inlet in Nova Scotia that will be heavy enough to withstand fall storms and even a hurricane. The first person we contacted, a reputable diver who does many of the moorings in that inlet, suggested a 2000lb (900kg) concrete block for our 26 ton boat. He said that was the heaviest weight he uses.
Now let’s think about that for a moment: Concrete loses half its weight in water and a block has virtually no form drag, so we are talking a total holding power of 1000lb (450kg). That is much less holding power than a good pattern 25lb (11kg) anchor provides. Would you trust your 56’ boat and home to a 25lb anchor, even in settled weather? I know we would not. Sure, when the block sinks into the mud the holding will go up, but not that much, and if the block moves at all from the snubbing of the boat, that benefit goes to zero.
I’m not trying to dump on the diver, particularly since, after a bit of discussion, he agreed that a lot more weight was required for our boat. But the point is—I know, you thought I would never get there—that many, maybe most, of the moorings in that inlet are at best 2000lb blocks.
Contrast that with our 120lb (55kg) SPADE that I would conservatively estimate can, when well set with plenty of scope, withstand a drag load of well over 8000lb (4500kg). That even makes a 1000lb (450kg) mushroom anchor (considered a heavy mooring weight on the east coast of the USA) look pretty wimpy. Even if it does move a bit, a good anchor, like a SPADE or Rocna, will reset itself, whereas a concrete block or mushroom anchor, once moved at all, will exert little more drag than its dead weight in water.
Finally, I know that our chain is in good condition and all the shackles are properly wired. Given all that, we know which ground tackle we will choose to give us a good night’s sleep.
Further to the above,
when bad weather threatens we are always amazed how many cruisers pick
up a mooring they know little or nothing about rather than heading for
the security of a snug cove and their own anchors.
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The Truth is Out About Old Style Anchors (John, 2007)
There is an interesting comparison test of anchors in the October issue of SAIL magazine. All the usual anchor suspects are put through their paces but what stands out is the very poor performance of traditional anchors, particularly the CQR, against more modern designs like the Rocna and SPADE. The testers at SAIL were surprised. We were not, having dragged a CQR around half the periphery of the Atlantic basin. See Gear Failures & Fixes for more about our experience with the CQR.
If
you are using an old design anchor and particularly if it is a CQR, we
strongly recommend that you upgrade to one of the newer designs. It is
one of the easiest, cheapest (in comparison to many other upgrades) and
most effective ways to increase your safety and enjoyment of cruising.
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