kateandjohnsail.boats

Q: How is in anchor like a glass of warm milk?

A: Both are sleep aids.

When your boat is bouncing in a bay in a 50 knot storm that is blowing over the top and swinging the boat around, the quality of your sleep will very much depend on how much you trust your anchor. The anchor that came to us on Quintessa was the original equipment, a 44 lb Delta. This very commonly used anchor held in good regard, but is a bit undersized for our 19 ton beauty. While we have never dragged anchor, we have twice looked down in clear water to see the previously set anchor lying on its side, rotated out of position by the movement of the boat. And honestly it has not been an easy anchor to set; many times we have had to drop it 4 or 5 times unsuccessfully before backing down at 2000 rpm with a rock solid hold.

Enter the new anchor. Our 77-pound Ultra was made in Turkey, so we were able to negotiate a good price for it. The swivel attaching it to the chain is another matter: John really likes the design of a Mantis swivel, available in the US, so our friend Sara kindly agreed to bring it in her luggage last fall. At the last minute, someone who shall remain nameless was *sure* we would never regret going up a size. We made payment for the larger size and Sara ended up with a really HEAVY boat part in her luggage. Well, as it turns out, “bigger and better” swivel was so big it didn’t fit into our anchor cradle and windlass configuration. We ended up having to buy the swivel made locally to go with the anchor. And we will be carrying a really heavy chunk back to Portland to sell on consignment! (You hear that, Mark at Sexton’s Chandlery? Get ready).

This next photo has a lot going on. There’s John, in the red, supervising the configuration of the anchor and swivel, yet unaware that it is too big. But up on the bow, there’s Mustafa the rigger. He’s working on the genoa furler, a completely unrelated system. And behind it all, a superyacht is rolling toward the water on the boatyard’s biggest lift. Never a dull moment.

Of course when the chain was out of the locker, I discovered that if I pretzel myself, I could squeeze into that locker, so it was time to get in there and clean out the brine.

The last bit we did to our ground tackle was to re-paint the chain markers, something done quickly and surreptitiously in the boat yard, taking a lot of care with a box and a lot of draping because using spray paint near luxury megayachts on the yard seemed dodgey.

New stainless steel chain would drop much more smoothly into the locker under our stainless anchor, but that upgrade will have to wait for another day.

Well, we have now anchored three times with the Ultra, and I’m happy to report that it was the same each time: choose a spot, drop the anchor with 4:1 rode, back down, and we are fast. Put on the snubber and that’s it. Done. Of course, we watch the boat for a while to make sure it settles.  After all is still for a while, we may go to shore and climb up to explore a cave, like the one here on an island called Dia, just north of Crete.  

When we come back down, we eat dinner and then sleep like babies.