The anchoring dance

“You know what to do and do it all by the book,
So how come you lose it when you drop the hook?”

Irene Quinn – The anchoring dance

You’ve reached the end of a passage, you are physically and mentally knackered and all you want to do is collapse in a salty heap. But there’s no relaxing just yet, there’s still one more job to do – you have to anchor the boat.

It sounds simple enough – find an appropriate spot (preferably where you can swing 360 degrees and not plough into your neighbours) drop the anchor and reverse until it sticks into the bottom of the ocean. And it is that simple – provided the wind is blowing in the right direction, there is minimal swell, there’s nothing to bang into, the seabed isn’t covered in chunks of coral waiting to snag your anchor chain, and your anchor decides to stay put.

Unfortunately you are unlikely to come across this magical collection of conditions very often and so anchoring, particularly if you are a bit sleep deprived, can sometimes be a teensy bit stressful. It is also one activity in sailing that is particularly famous for the domestics it causes.

Usually anchoring involves one person in the cockpit steering the boat and one up front on the foredeck giving directions (often hand signals are used, but sometimes hollering can be involved.) I have heard tale of a particularly tricky harbour where disagreements between couples attempting to maneuver their boats were so frequent that some less-than-charitable folk would sit in deck chairs and rate the arguments out of 10 using paper plates.

So far Paddy and I have managed to avoid any anchoring battles. We do however have our own, slightly different, version of the anchoring dance. Because Wildflower is a big steel boat, she has a big steel anchor (80 pounds) and a ridiculous amount of chain (160 meters). Having a lot of chain is good, but really we only need about 100m. A conservative amount of chain is five times the depth of water you are anchoring in so, since we seldom anchor in more than 20m of water, 160m is a bit of an overkill. It means we are carrying more weight than we really should and it also means there is a lot of chain to get tangled when you are pulling the anchor up.

Here is where Anna the Anchor Chain Wrangler comes in. Basically my job (being the more compact of the two of us) is to crawl into the anchor locker and layer the chain as Paddy winches it up, to stop it tangling the next time we put the anchor down. While I am usually busiest when we are pulling the anchor up, it still doesn’t mean I am off the hook when we are dropping ours. Paddy is very particular when it comes to anchoring and if he is even remotely unhappy about the situation we haul it up and start again. If we are anchoring in sand or gravel then all that happens is I get a decent arm work-out, if we are anchoring in mud however, it is an entirely different story. There have been a number of times when I have crawled out of the anchor locker looking like the creature from the black lagoon after repeatedly hauling up an anchor chain covered in muddy goo.

It is worthwhile getting slimed every now and again for the peace of mind of knowing you are securely fastened to the bottom of the Pacific. Dragging an anchor, particularly at night, is no small thing. If you are anchored near other boats there is the danger you can drift down onto them. If a strong wind suddenly blows up and this happens you can do a lot of damage to other boats, as well as your own. There is also the danger of hitting coral reefs, land or shallow ground and the chance of drifting in the way of oncoming vessels. We have also heard of people returning from a day on land to discover their boat has gone walkabout with nobody on board, which is always a little exciting! So, in light of that, I don’t really begrudge Paddy his old-womanish tendencies when it comes to anchoring.

When we were leaving the small island town of We to head to New Caledonia’s capital Noumea however, Paddy had to do some anchor wrangling that put all of my efforts to shame. It was the usual routine – me in the anchor locker and Paddy remotely winching up the chain – but this time I noticed a somewhat smokey smell. I alerted Paddy to this and he gave the anchor winch a bit of a rest, but on attempting to resume hauling up the chain, the winch refused to play ball. Paddy was repeatedly pressing buttons and absolutely nothing was happening.

After working out it wasn’t a connection problem he gave the solenoid a couple of whacks with a winch handle to see if it was jammed (it wasn’t.) At this point we were no longer attached to the bottom of the ocean and we had a bunch of chain and an 80 pound anchor dangling below us. There were a couple of reefs nearby and land masses to keep an eye on so we steered Wildflower out of the way the best we could and tried to manually haul the chain up. This meant I was up front keeping an eye on where we were drifting and looking out for other traffic, while Paddy tried all manner of ways to haul the anchor up on board. He must have been channeling the Incredible Hulk or something, because he managed to haul an 80 pound hunk of steel and 10 metres of chain up to the bow of the boat. At that stage the problem was getting it up over the front of the boat, which was pretty much impossible to do. First he tackled it with a boat hook but it wasn’t going to come that easily – tying the
spinnaker and genoa halyards (ropes) around the anchor and hauling it up with the electric winch met with more success however. Unfortunately, in the process of this, the anchor swung back and forth and crunched into the front of the boat. It didn’t do any serious damage but it took a few chunks out of poor old Wildflower and made a ghastly noise in the process. After the adrenalin died down the Incredible Hulk developed a few aches and pains too (hardly surprising!) but after a bit of paint and some TLC the pair of them should be fine.

NOTE FOR MOTHER: At no point were either of us in any danger during this incident. We just motored around in circles until we managed to sort it out xx :

The epilogue to this little story is almost as frustrating as the incident itself. A little while after Paddy had managed to get the anchor and chain on board, he decided to tidy the rest of the chain up. After a bit of playing around I suddenly heard the anchor winch making all the appropriate noises, followed by a quiet “do you want to hear the good news?” (possibly said through gritted teeth) from Paddy. It seemed our anchor winch had decided it was going to work again.

It turned out our anchor winch had an undocumented feature – thermal overload protection – which kicks in when it gets overheated (we were pulling up the anchor in quite a bit of wind so it wasn’t really surprising.) Basically this means, if it gets too hot, it simply stops for half an hour, has a wee rest and then starts up again. (We were pulling up the anchor in quite a bit of wind so it wasn’t really surprising that it got a bit warm.) Unfortunately there was no mention of this feature in the instructions that came with the anchor winch, otherwise we could have just bobbed around, keeping an eye on things, until it had cooled down again.

We had resigned ourselves to the fact we would be looking for a mooring or a marina berth while we fixed up the anchor winch, so not having to do that was definitely a bonus. But both captain and boat would probably have preferred to give the unnecessary bumps and bruises a miss!

We have been in Noumea for a few days now and it has been a bit of a culture shock. It is the first time we have seen traffic crossing signals and busses and McDonalds advertisements in six months and it is a little scary! It has been nice to get back to civilization and stock up on stuff though, and the aquarium here is supposed to be spectacular (it has its own live coral reef) so I’m really looking forward to checking that out. Stay tuned for the Noumea blog.

Thinking of you all,

Anna and Paddy xx