Anchor and Windlass Upgrade

Original setup.

As you all know, we purchased Tropical Horizons used.  That being said, she needed some upgrades.  One of the things that I have always found interesting is just how many boaters out there ignore their ground tackle (anchoring gear).  I’m not sure if it’s a lake and river boater thing but I’ve almost always found that most boats have undersized ground tackle.  Although you do find many boats in the local marinas here with ok anchors, very few actually have what I call “sleep easy gear”, in other words, if you were to spend a night at anchor, just how easy would you sleep knowing that you would not end up on shore.  Tropical Horizons was part of the ok crowd when we first got her.  She had a 35lb. Danforth with 15ft. of 5/16 galvanised chain shackled to about 100 ft. of 5/8 three strand nylon rode.  The deck was fitted with an electric capstan with a foot switch, one large cleat in the anchor platform and a small hawse pipe that lead into the anchor locker below decks.  The chain was simply shackled to the rode so you would only be able to store the rode in the anchor locker. 

We never really anchored out except for when I brought Tropical Horizons up from Leamington overnight in Erieau (nope didn’t sleep well that night), and a few times out in Long Point Bay for a few hours and finally again in Long Point Bay overnight (slept better that time).  When we anchored in Long Point bay overnight we actually were at anchor all day and I had the opportunity to see just how well the Danforth had set.  I felt a little better knowing that there was no expected weather overnight for the area so I was a little more comfortable.  Still I did want to improve our ground tackle situation.  The year we decided to make the investment in a more robust anchoring system was the year we decided to move from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario.

Here is a list of what we did:

-        Purchased a new windlass from Lofrans that could handle the chain we would use.

-        Made the decision to go with High Test 5/16” chain so we could carry more chain with less weight.  This also allowed us to go with an all chain rode even if the windlass can accommodate chain and rope.

-        Purchased a ROCNA 25kg anchor.

-        Purchased 250 ft. of 5/16” anchor chain

-        Added an anchor swivel.

-        Built a chain snubber using 3/4” three strand nylon line that would allow us to use our docking cleats and take strain off of the windlass while absorbing the shock loads from the anchor chain.

The process was straight forward.  First remove the old anchor, rode and capstan.  With that done I set about to mount the new windlass trying to use as many of the existing holes as possible.  This was somewhat difficult and frustrating as it seems the anchor platform was built around the existing capstan.  Eventually I was able to accomplish this task. 

With all the holes in place, I did what the builder did not; I removed a bit of the coring from the edges of the holes, and using a thickened epoxy filled in those areas to seal the deck material properly.   The hole left from the old foot switch was too large to be re-used and a little too far out of the way.  I sealed and covered this hole with deck plate. 

Once all of the edges of the holes were cured I checked again for fit and sanded away areas that needed adjusting.  The installation was rather simple but did lead to many cuts and bruises as the access to the anchor locker inside the boat is, well….made for children not full grown men.  With the windlass in place and tested, all that was left to do was load up all of that chain.  Before we did this we marked off the chain every 10 feet with paint.  The chain was then shackled off to a plate inside the locker and we proceeded to pull up all of that chain followed by the anchor.

I still have an adjustment to make to the anchor roller in order to accommodate the larger ROCNA anchor but as it sits now, it works well.  We are very happy with this new arrangement and have used it many times although we’ve not used it overnight yet.  The times that we have used it, we’ve been very happy with the holding performance of the new arrangement.  We keep our old anchor on board and I store it at the stern as it’s still a good back up or extra anchor and always good to have around.

Notice the filled holes that were not used and the deck plate used to cover the hawse pipe that was part of the old system.

To the far left you can see the deck plate used to cover the hole from the old foot switch.

The ROCNA still needs to sit back in the anchor roller.