Ancient Englishe and anchors

TUCKED AWAY among my boating books at home is a copy of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, published in 1771. Well, it’s only the first volume, to tell the truth, containing words starting with A and B. But among those words is one that interests all boaters: Anchor. And it’s quite interesting to read what they thought about anchors all those years ago ...

ANCHOR, in maritime affairs, an extremely ufeful inftrument, ferving to retain a fhip in its place.

It is a very large and heavy iron inftrument, with a double hook at one end, and a ring at the other, by which it is faftened to a cable. It is caft into the bottom of the fea, or rivers; when, taking its hold, it keeps fhips from being drawn away by the wind, tide, or currents.

The parts of an anchor are, 1. The ring to which the cable is faftened. 2. The beam or fhank, which is the longeft past of the anchor. 3. The arm, which is that which runs into the ground. 4. The flouke or fluke, by fome called the palm, the broad and peaked part, with its barbs, like the head of an arrow, which faftens into the ground. 5. The ftock, a piece of wood faftened to the beam near the ring, ferving to guide the fluke, fo that it may fall right and fix in the ground.

There are feveral kinds of anchors: 1. The fheet-anchor, which is the largeft, and is never ufed but in violent ftorms, to hinder the fhip from being driven a-fhore. 2. The two bowers, which are ufed for fhips to ride in a harbour. 3. The ftream anchor. 4. The grapnel.

The fhank of an anchor is to be three times the length of one of its flukes; and a fhip of 500 tons hath her fheet-anchor of 2000 weight; and fo proportionably for others, fmaller or greater. The anchor is faid to be a-peak when the cable is perpendicular between the hawfe and the anchor.

An anchor is faid to come home when it cannot hold the fhip, the cable is hitched about the fluke. To fhoe an anchor is to fit boards upon the flukes, that it may hold the better in foft ground. When the anchor hangs right up and down by the fhip’s fide, it is faid to be a cock-bell, upon the fhip’s coming to an anchor.

The inhabitants of Ceylon ufe large ftones inftead of anchors; and in fome other places of the Indies the anchors are a kind a wooden machines, loaded with ftones.

— Well, there you are. Now you not only have encyclopedic knowledge of anchors, but you can read Olde Englishe, too. I guess that makes you quite a fmartafs.

Today’s Thought

In the stormy night it is well that anchors twain be let down from the swift ship.

— Pindar, Olympian Odes

Tailpiece

“How’s the new Jewish opera singer getting along?”

“I’m not sure. She doesn’t seem to know if she’s Carmen or Cohen because she’s always so Bizet.”

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

Recovering a lost anchor

IF YOU WANT to call yourself a sailor, you really should know how to recover a lost anchor. Luckily for you, I know how. I found the instructions among a bunch of old magazine clippings that had fallen down behind my desk. So here, in the words of a very old salt, is the way they used to do it in the days before you could effect a quick and painless anchor replacement by flashing a credit card in a West Marine store:

“You will need two boats, an oarsman in each. Fasten a weight to the middle of a long, heavy line to keep it down; also, position weights about 10 feet from the middle.

“Fasten the ends of the line to the two boats, coiling it loosely in each. Row to windward of the estimated position of the anchor, then row the boats away from each other to run out the line so it will be stretched just off the bottom. Row the boats down toward the estimated position of the anchor.

“When the bight of the line catches on the anchor’s fluke, cross the boats to take a round turn around the fluke. Make a running bowline at the end of another line, around the drag line, weight it so it sinks, and slip it down. When the bowline is fast to the fluke, pull up the anchor.”

Yeah. Okay. Thanks a lot, old-timer. So where did I put that credit card?

Today’s Thought

The wonder is always new that any sane man can be a sailor.

— Emerson, English Traits

Tailpiece

“How much is a bottle of brandy? It’s my nephew’s birthday and he likes brandy.”
“Well, madam, it depends on the age. Seven-year-old is quite reasonably priced. Ten-year-old costs a bit more. Twelve-year-old can be quite expensive.”
“Gee, that’s terrible. My nephew is 25.”

An Anchoring Revolution

SOME YEARS AGO, about this time, I was pulling up the anchor on my boat when I injured my back. I herniated a disc. It was my own fault, I guess. What actually happened was that the shackle that joins the chain to the rope got stuck in the bow roller. I was in a hurry to get the anchor up, because we were too close to another boat, so I impatiently gave an extra-hard jerk on the line, instead of leaning over to ease it through by hand. The shackle popped through and at the same time a vertebra in my lower back went pop, too. It pressed against a nerve, and my right foot went numb.

I’m happy to say that my little injury has now mostly cured itself, as most injuries to the body do, given time. At least, it doesn’t hurt so much. But I still give much thought to the universal problem of raising the anchor, especially when you’re singlehanded.

You can use a winch to extract the anchor from the seabed, but as soon as it comes free, your boat will start to drift, most likely sideways into the anchored boat alongside you. The winch is just too slow for the distance the anchor must travel from the seabed to the bow roller. You need to be at the tiller and mainsheet or engine controls immediately the anchor comes unstuck. So you have no option but to haul it up by hand as fast as you can.

But the answer is simple. It was suggested in a conversation I had the other day with the owner of a MacGregor 26. It is the lightweight anchor. The very lightweight anchor. Not one of those ordinary lightweight aluminum things.

I have refined the concept and invented the Vigoranka Collapsible Anchor©. It weighs almost nothing. It saves space. You can fold it up or crush it into a tiny space without harming it. It is going to revolutionize anchoring as we know it.

The Vigoranka© works on the principle that water is very heavy in air but light in  water. So all you have to do is lower the sturdy plastic Vigoranka© into the water and let it fill. It will hold 75 pounds of water. Now when you consider that a 35-pound CQR will hold a 32-foot sailboat in almost any conditions, you can surely see the advantage of using an anchor that weighs more than twice as much.

But you can easily raise it to the surface by hand, and as it comes out of the water you simply flip a little valve and all the water drains back out into the sea, allowing you to bring the Vigoranka© aboard with one hand and no strain whatsoever.

Frankly, I am amazed that no-one has thought of this before. But then, no-one thought of Twitter before Twitter was invented, and now the world is just full of tweets everywhere. Which just goes to show you. 

Today’s Thought

The wonder is always new that any sane man can be a sailor.

—Emerson, English Traits

Tailpiece

“How’s the bird breeding going?”

“Great. I just crossed a homing pigeon with a parrot.”

“What for?”

“If the pigeon gets lost it can ask the way home.”

Drop anchor and lower the lake

 I HAVE A BRAIN TEASER for you today. It comes courtesy of the British Broadcasting Corporation, but it has nothing to do with broadcasting. It concerns boating:

Imagine a boat floating in a lake, and a heavy object such as an anchor (but without a chain) is dropped off the side. What happens to the water level of the lake?

Does it: a) Rise; b) Fall; c) Stay the same?

Answer b) is correct — the water level falls!

The explanation
When it's in the boat, the anchor displaces a volume of water with the same weight as the anchor itself.

When it's submerged in the water, the anchor displaces an amount of water equivalent to its own volume.

Because the anchor — made of steel, say — is heavier than the equivalent volume of water, it displaces more water when it's in the boat. Submerged, it only displaces its own volume, and all else being equal, the water level falls.

Test it at home

You can easily test this yourself in the kitchen sink, using a sandwich box as the boat, and something like a paperweight as the anchor.

Put an inch or two of water into the sink (enough to easily cover the paperweight later). Then put the paperweight into the sandwich box, and float the box on the water.

Once the water has settled, mark the water level in the sink with a felt-tip pen. Now take the weight out of the box, and submerge it in the water.

When it's settled again, you'll see that the water level has indeed fallen (the bigger the paperweight, or the less water there is, the more the water level will fall).

Today’s Thought

Science is wonderfully equipped to answer the question “How?” but it gets terribly confused when you ask the question “Why?”

— Erwin Chargaff, professor of Biological Chemistry, Columbia University

Tailpiece

Contrary to popular belief, sex is not hereditary. If your parents never had it, you won’t have it either.

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday for a new Mainly about Boats column.)   

The art of anchoring

ALMOST EVERY TIME I’ve wandered into the beautiful anchorages of the San Juan Islands the same thing has happened. It’s kick-back time in the cockpit. The ice is tinkling merrily in my glass, the sun is spreading glorious color all over the western horizon and there are pleasant sounds of supper preparation coming from the galley. It’s bliss.

And then there’s that dreaded sound, the pocketa-pocketa-pocketa of a diesel engine. Some boat full of happy idiots has just arrived and is frantically looking for a space to anchor before nightfall. Oh god, they’re looking my way. Oh god, they’re going to drop their 5-pound mushroom anchor right in front of me.

Lord help me. Shall I glower at them and make a fuss and wave them off now, or wait until the middle of the night when they actually drag down onto me? Either way, my blood pressure is up and my heart rate is skyrocketing. The evening is ruined.

It’s little wonder that the sailors’ bulletin boards are always filled with discussions about anchoring. You’ll notice that people have very strong views about which anchors are best. They will also produce very scientific reasons for their views.

I tend to shy away from those discussions because anchoring is not a precise science. It’s an art. It’s an art that comes naturally to some lucky people and it’s an art that has to be learned, often the hard way, by the rest of us.

Hardly any two “official” tests of anchors have come up with the same results because none of the factors affecting an anchor’s efficiency are the same. There are some simple rules of thumb concerning the weight of a suitable anchor, the composition of its rode, and the amount of scope needed. But after that, you’re on your own.

For example, if you’re a wise anchorer, upon entering an anchorage, you have a good, slow, look around. You take your time and watch the depths. You see how the others are anchored. Do they all have one line ashore? Two anchors out? All-chain, or nylon? How are they lying in relation to the wind? Is the current holding them against the wind? Can you estimate where their anchors are lying by looking at their rodes as they fall away from their bows? Can you estimate distance well enough to see if you’ll clear them when you swing in a circle? Can you see the spot where you want to drop your anchor? Are you prepared to reassure someone who complains you’re dropping your anchor right on his stern?

As with any other art, your background knowledge will show when it comes to selecting and dropping an anchor in the right place. For instance, you will know, by instinct, by experience, or by study, that an anchor’s effectiveness depends on:

--The firmness of bottom and the amount of debris down there.

--The ease of penetration.

--The weight of the anchor.

--Its ability to reset itself without fouling.

--The surface area of the anchor.

--The amount of scope provided now, and for higher tides.

--The angle of pull on the anchor and how to change it.

--Your ability to detect dragging.

--The makeup of the rode.

--When two anchors are used, if they should be set in a V or in series.

--And so on.

There’s more, plenty more, but this should demonstrate why anchoring is a difference experience every time. It’s a dark art, a sixth sense laced with cunning and boldness and a readiness to try again, maybe with a different anchor, if it doesn’t work the first time.

A large proportion of world cruisers depend mainly on three or four rather old-fashioned types of anchors, chosen not because they have scored top marks in the latest tests for one particular type of bottom, but because they work reasonably well in a reasonably wide variety of bottoms. Among them are the CQR, the genuine Bruce, the Delta, the Danforth and the Luke or Herreshoff. But in the end you have to remember that no anchor is best for all bottoms and it’s a wise anchorer who checks the chart to see what the bottom consists of before he commits an anchor to it.

Today’s Thought
In all things, success depends on previous preparation, and without such preparation there is sure to be failure.
— Confucius, Analects

Boaters’ Rules of Thumb, #171
Some of the rules of the road at sea are known as “overriding rules.” They override all other rules. For instance, Rule 13 says that the overtaking vessel shall keep clear. That overrides the rule that says power gives way to sail. If you, in a sailboat, under sail power only, start to overtake a powerboat, it’s your duty to keep clear.

Tailpiece
“A cat burglar robbed my place last night.”
“How you do know it was a car burglar?”
“He only stole the parakeet, a can of tuna, and a pint of milk.”

(Drop by every Monday, Wednesday, Friday, for a new Mainly about Boats column.)

About ancient anchors

TUCKED AWAY among my boating books at home is a copy of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, published in 1771. Well, it’s only the first volume, to tell the truth, containing words starting with A and B. But among those words is one that interests all boaters: Anchor. And it’s quite interesting to read what they thought about anchors 239 years ago . . .

"ANCHOR, in maritime affairs, an extremely ufeful inftrument, ferving to retain a fhip in its place.

"It is a very large and heavy iron inftrument, with a double hook at one end, and a ring at the other, by which it is faftened to a cable. It is caft into the bottom of the fea, or rivers; when, taking its hold, it keeps fhips from being drawn away by the wind, tide, or currents.

"The parts of an anchor are, 1. The ring to which the cable is faftened. 2. The beam or fhank, which is the longeft part of the anchor. 3. The arm, which is that which runs into the ground. 4. The flouke or fluke, by fome called the palm, the broad and peaked part, with its barbs, like the head of an arrow, which faftens into the ground. 5. The ftock, a piece of wood faftened to the beam near the ring, ferving to guide the fluke, fo that it may fall right and fix in the ground.

"There are feveral kinds of anchors: 1. The fheet-anchor, which is the largeft, and is never ufed but in violent ftorms, to hinder the fhip from being driven a-fhore. 2. The two bowers, which are ufed for fhips to ride in a harbour. 3. The ftream anchor. 4. The grapnel.

"The fhank of an anchor is to be three times the length of one of its flukes; and a fhip of 500 tons hath her fheet-anchor of 2000 weight; and fo proportionably for others, fmaller or greater. The anchor is faid to be a-peak when the cable is perpendicular between the hawfe and the anchor.

"An anchor is faid to come home when it cannot hold the fhip, the cable is hitched about the fluke. To fhoe an anchor is to fit boards upon the flukes, that it may hold the better in foft ground. When the anchor hangs right up and down by the fhip’s fide, it is faid to be a cock-bell, upon the fhip’s coming to an anchor.

"The inhabitants of Ceylon ufe large ftones inftead of anchors; and in fome other places of the Indies the anchors are a kind a wooden machines, loaded with ftones."

-- Well, there you are. Now you not only have encyclopedic knowledge of anchors, but you can read Olde Englishe, too. I guess that makes you quite a fmartafs.

Today’s Thought
In the stormy night it is well that anchors twain be let down from the swift ship.
— Pindar, Olympian Odes

Boaters’ Rules of Thumb, #105
Wires near the compass. Electricity generates magnetism in the wires it runs through, and if these wires are near the compass it will be adversely affected. So the rule of thumb is to twist the two wires going to the compass light. Twist them around each other in a loose spiral, so that the magnetic effects are canceled out.

Tailpiece
“How’s the new Jewish opera singer getting along?”
“I’m not sure. She doesn’t seem to know if she’s Carmen or Cohen because she’s always so Bizet.”

Anchoring without harm

LAST YEAR ABOUT THIS TIME I was pulling up the anchor on my boat when I injured my back. I herniated a disc. It was my own fault, I guess. What actually happened was that the shackle that joins the chain to the rope got stuck in the bow roller. I was in a hurry to get the anchor up, because we were too close to another boat, so I impatiently gave an extra-hard jerk on the line instead of leaning over to ease it through by hand. The shackle popped through and at the same time a vertebra in my lower back went pop, too. It pressed against a nerve, and my right foot went numb.

I’m happy to say that my little injury has now mostly cured itself, as most injuries to the body do, given time; but I still give much thought to the universal problem of raising the anchor, especially when you’re singlehanded.

You can use a winch to extract the anchor from the seabed, but as soon as it comes free, your boat will start to drift, most likely sideways into the anchored boat alongside you. The winch is just too slow for the distance the anchor must travel from the seabed to the bow roller. You need to be at the tiller and mainsheet or engine controls immediately the anchor comes unstuck. So you have no option but to haul it up by hand as fast as you can.

But the answer is simple. It was suggested in a conversation I had the other day with the owner of a MacGregor 26. It is the lightweight anchor. The very lightweight anchor. Not one of those aluminum things.

I have refined the concept and invented the Vigoranka Collapsible Anchor. It weighs almost nothing. It saves space. You can fold it up or crush it into a tiny space without harming it. It is going to revolutionize anchoring as we know it.

The Vigoranka© works on the principle that water is very heavy in air but light in water. So all you have to do is lower the sturdy plastic Vigoranka into the water and let it fill. It will hold 75 pounds of water. Now when you consider that a 35-pound CQR will hold a 32-foot sailboat in almost any conditions, you can surely see the advantage of using an anchor that weighs more than twice as much.

But you can easily raise it to the surface by hand, and as it comes out of the water you simply flip a little switch and all the water drains back out into the sea, allowing you to bring the Vigoranka aboard with one hand and no strain whatsoever.

Frankly, I am amazed that no-one has thought of this before. But then, no-one thought of Twitter before Twitter was invented, and now the world is just full of tweets everywhere. Which just goes to show you.

Today’s Thought
The wonder is always new that any sane man can be a sailor.
—Emerson, English traits

Boaters’ Rules of Thumb, #91
Fuel tanks. Deep, narrow tanks aid in stability when your boat is rolling. The long dimension should lie in a fore-and-aft direction. Large tanks need internal baffles to stop fuel sloshing forcefully from side to side.

Tailpiece
“How’s the bird breeding going?”
“Great. I just crossed a homing pigeon with a parrot.”
“What for?”
“If the pigeon gets lost it can ask the way home.”

Rum always helps

A FEW YEARS AGO I was singlehanding in my Cape Dory 25D through the Gulf Islands, in British Columbia, Canada, where tight anchorages often make it necessary to take a line ashore.
I found myself in a narrow inlet in Wallace Island and watched with smug amusement while the six crewmembers of a 30-footer struggled to get a line ashore to the steep bank lining the inlet.

With two women aboard the boat, and four men in the rubber dinghy, they roared back and forth in total confusion, slipping and sliding and tugging and cursing until finally, finally, they found a large rock to tie their line around and fumbled their way back to the cockpit where they flopped back in apparent exhaustion.

Right. Now it’s my turn. Here comes the experienced old salt. I’m gonna show them how to do it. On my own.

I motored in slowly alongside them, dropped my stern anchor, and payed out the rode until I judged I was close enough to get a line ashore. I cleated the stern anchor line, put the engine in neutral, dropped neatly into my dinghy, and wended my way to the bow where, with commendable foresight, I had prepared a shore line.

I took one end of the line in my left hand and with my right hand I sculled ashore. From the looks on their faces, I don’t think they’d ever seen anyone scull a dinghy with one oar over the transom before. So I sculled neat and fast and powerful to impress them even more, especially the tall blonde lady.

I rammed the dinghy up onto the rocky ledge, sprinted up the bank, passed my line around the trunk of a small tree, and leaped back down to the dinghy.

With the line in my left hand again, I sculled back to the boat in my most manly fashion. Speed was of the essence because the 25D was secured only by the stern anchor, and was free to drift sideways at the mercy of any puff of wind that might come along.

Just as I reached the bow of the 25D, with the crew of the boat next door watching intently, the bitter end of the line I was tugging on flipped out of the foredeck anchor locker and dived overboard.

I had forgotten to secure the stupid bow line to the boat.

By reflex, I dropped my sculling oar, and, by a wonderful stroke of luck, managed to grab the sinking line in the water. But even so, things had taken a nasty turn.

The position was this: I was standing in my dinghy with a line that reached from my right hand to the shore, around a tree, and back to my left hand. The 25D was now out of reach and drifting slowly astern. I couldn’t drop the line because I’d no way to recover it. I couldn’t scull the dinghy because I couldn’t drop the line. My mind had gone blank and my muscles were frozen. The blonde was regarding me quizzically.

Just then a large powerboat came past, dragging the usual wake. The wake hit the 25D's transom and pushed the boat toward the shore, toward me, just enough for me to reach the bow. I transferred both ends of the line to one hand and gripped the forestay with the other. The line wasn’t long enough to reach the bow, but a sudden spurt of adrenaline allowed me to exert the power needed to bring my arms together across my chest, and by some miracle I managed to tie the two ends of the line together behind the forestay. It was a granny knot, but the blonde couldn’t see that.

I got my breath back, and sculled expertly to the cockpit. I hopped aboard nimbly and smiled in friendly fashion at the slack-jawed crew next door. Then I went below and helped myself to a large tot of rum. I think it was a tot. I drank it straight from the bottle. It might have been more.

I guess the moral of the story is that we’re all lubbers sometimes, but if you have a few points in the black box you can get away with it occasionally.

Today's Thought
Seamanship … is not learned in a day, nor many days; it requires years. —Jack London.

Tailpiece
“You’ve got to lose weight. “I’m putting you on lettuce, carrots and green onions for a week.”
“OK, doc. Before or after meals?”

Light and sweetness

EVERY TIME I flick through the West Marine catalog my eye is stopped by those beautiful brass kerosene anchor lamps. The Dutch firm of Den Haan has been making these anchor lamps for more than 75 years.

They have Fresnel lenses, bails top and bottom, and safety guards. They’re thorough seagoing lamps, fit to make any sailor swoon.

But, the last time I looked, there was a line in the catalog that made me grind my teeth: “Not Coast Guard approved to mark a boat at anchor.”

Well now, so what? Who needs Coast Guard approval?

According to the International Regulations for the Prevention of Collisions at Sea (the Colregs), if you have a boat less than 164 feet in length and you put out an all-round white light that can be seen for two miles, it’s a legal anchor light.

It doesn’t have to be electric. The Colregs say so. A flame from a kerosene lantern with a wick half-an-inch wide and a half-inch high will do the trick.

To be visible for one nautical mile, a light needs a brightness of just under one candela.
Here are other distances and the brightness required:

Miles/Candelas
2 /4.3
3 /12
4 /27
5 /52

And what, you say, is a candela? Hell, I was hoping you wouldn’t ask. It’s kinda boring. But if you must know, read on.

The candela is the metric system’s base unit of luminous intensity. You can think of it as one candle-power. It’s pretty close. So you’d need an oil lantern the equivalent of 4.3 candles to be seen two miles away. Or five candles in a glass jar, for that matter.

Meanwhile, you might want to memorize the official definition of a candela, so you can blurt it out through gritted teeth when the Coast Guard sits you down in front of the spotlight and grills you about your “non-approved” anchor light:

“The candela is the luminous intensity, in the perpendicular direction, of a surface of 1/600,000 of a square meter of a black body at the temperature of freezing platinum under a pressure of 101,325 pascals.”

The Coasties will be astonished at your knowledge, not to mention humbled and amazed, so now is your opportunity to take advantage of the situation. Tell them to move off a distance of two miles to confirm that they can indeed see your anchor light.

As soon as they leave, blow out your lantern and slip away into the darkness.

(PS: Don’t mention my name in connection with any of this, or there will be serious consequences.)

Today’s Thought

And the light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.
--New Testament: John i, 5

Tailpiece

“Where did you get that nice new anchor?”
“Well, I was going to my boat yesterday when this beautiful blonde came along carrying a 25-pound CQR. When she saw me, she threw it to the ground, took off all her clothes, and said: ‘Take what you want.’”
“Ah, good choice. The clothes probably wouldn’t have fit you anyway.”

Anchors: Weight counts most

People often say it’s the shape of your anchor that counts, not the weight, but that’s not entirely true. Weight matters, too.

No matter what kind of anchor you use, heavier is better. It’s weight, sheer weight, that helps an anchor penetrate the bottom. And, remember, things weigh less under water. Some of the new alloy anchors are so light they almost float in air, never mind water. When you toss one overboard with a nonchalant flick of the wrist, it zigs and zags drunkenly through the water like a falling leaf. There’s no knowing where such a thing might land, or where you might end up anchored—if, in fact it ever manages to scritch itself into the sea bed.

No thank you. On a little 22-footer I once owned I carried a 25-pound CQR. People sniggered and said it looked out of proportion, but when I dropped my anchor it didn’t prance and glide like a ballet dancer. It fell like a ton of bricks. It sent waves halfway up the bow. It crashed into the sea bottom and buried itself in a massive crater.

When I was anchored, I was really anchored. Shape is OK, but weight is what really counts most.

* * *

Anchoring rights

Know your rights when you anchor. Basically, the first one to anchor has all the rights.

U.S. Admiralty Court decision number 124-5861 of 1956 says:
“A vessel shall be found at fault if it … anchors so close to another vessel as to foul her when swinging … and/or fails to shift anchorage when dragging dangerously close to another anchored vessel. Furthermore, the vessel that anchored first shall warn the one who anchored last that the berth chosen will foul the former’s berth.”

* * *