Marking Chain

Anchoring with chain is simple enough, the weight of the chain provides a wonderful catenary curve which will ensure a proper and horizontal pull on the anchor, when anchoring with sufficient scope. But how do you know how much chain you have let out?

The solution is simple, all you need to do is mark the chain at designated points, that way when you see the mark you will know how much chain you have let out! 

Now comes the hard part, how do you mark the chain so that you can easily see it while not having it be in the way of the windlass gypsy? Some people sew tags onto the links, but these can get fouled on things if they are too long and they are easy to miss as the chain rushes out of the roller and into the water. Another option is to stick little rubber inserts into the links, but these are time consuming to install and tend to fall out of the chain with time and use. Another option is to paint a long section of the chain with spray paint, but this will wear off as the chain drags along the bottom. 

As you can see, there is no right way, and any method you use will result in the need of maintenance to keep it operational for you. 

I have gone the route of painting, as it is quick and easy to apply, and when it wears off, I simply spray it again. The paint I have sprayed on the bow anchor rode is currently three years old and still visible, but not as apparent as it was when new. 

You will find that the paint closest to the anchor will wear the first, but the paint further away will stay in better shape. The 20 foot paint is pretty much gone, the 40 foot paint is barely there, but the 60 foot mark and on is still vividly visible. 

If you choose to paint your chain, be sure to write down your color combination, otherwise you might forget the system if you don't anchor for a while. 

The system we use is simple: 

20 = Black
40 = Yellow
60 = Green
80 = Red
100 = White

So, 140 feet would be a White Bands and a Yellow Ban. 

Since 200 would be two white bands, I simply add a short green stripe to indicate the 200 foot mark. This makes it easy to distinguish when we cross the 180 and into the 200 foot mark. 

Preparations to go Cruising

If you are thinking of going cruising and want to begin preparing your yacht for the journey, the first and most important thing to do is to stop what you are doing and re-evaluate what you really need to bring with you.

First and foremost, you will need solid rigging and good sails. A sailboat sails, and your yacht needs to have this area covered with a sound setup. This means good upwind sails, good downwind sails, good heavy weather sails, and good light air sails.

The second thing you need is a solid steering system. Be it tiller or wheel, make sure that everything is up to snuff and familiarize yourself with your system to the point that you can maintain it and repair it yourself with the tools and materials you carry on board.

Lastly, you need clothes for your trip. The obvious clothes are things you like to wear on a daily basis that are comfortable. You also need some heavy weather clothes, such as a good set of foulies, and some cold weather clothes (because it does get cold in the tropics and you want to stay comfortable). 

Notice how in this list, there is nothing about food and provisions before you cast off. The reason is, when you are tied to shore, you will over-plan your provisions and bring way too much food along for the ride! This will weigh down your yacht and cause you to sail slower as you voyage.

You might think that all this food is necessary, but when you get going, you will find that you like to eat the local food instead of canned food. Yes, canned food keeps for years, but a grocery store is never further than a week away! 

Now, even if you plan to do an ocean crossing, don't buy your food before you leave, because you will overbuy. At the begging of your cruise, you will be coastal hopping as you get all the bugs out of the systems (a shakedown cruise) and this is when you will realize that you can get food everywhere you go.

When we lived aboard, we had 1 locker dedicated to canned food. When we decided to go cruising (which will involve a trans-atlantic) we decided to increase our canned food supply from 1 locker to 7 lockers! This added a ton of weight, literally, to our boat. Our designed waterline (DWL) is currently 4 inches underwater, letting us know that our heavy displacement boat is a "heavily loaded" heavy displacement boat. This has greatly reduced our performance to windward, which has made our voyage proceed a lot slower.

Now, if you are planning to head out and go far, fast, and therefore you will need all your canned foods before you go, give yourself a month of cruising coastally before you actually shoot far away. This will let you figure out how much food you really need to carry on board before you make the leap. 

You might also find that your plans change and you won't end up going across an ocean when you thought you would, meaning that all that added weight is not that necessary! We left in July 2017 with plans to cross the Atlantic during August or September. Due to a very active hurricane season, followed by a series of powerful gales, we ended up heading South towards the Bahamas to let the winter pass and plan to cross in May 2018. Now, 6 months after we left from Baltimore, Maryland, planning on being in the Azores by November 2017, we are sitting in Cape Fear, North Carolina (three states away) in January 2018. 

We have been cruising for 6 months and still have almost all our canned food that is weighing our boat down considerably, all because we bought the food before we untied the lines. In hindsight, we would have been better off to just head out. As we made our way down the Chesapeake Bay, we would have realized that the weather was not conducive to a winter ocean crossing of the North Atlantic, and would have put off buying all those canned foods. Then when we were getting near our departure date, we could have stocked up on the foods that we did need for the actual ocean crossing.

Now we know, and we won't buy a ton of food beforehand. We will go eating this canned food for the next several years and not go replenishing it as we go, to lighten the load and hopefully raise up our waterline once again!

Mooring Link vs. Windlass Link

As if selecting a chain to anchor your boat with wasn't complicated enough, there is one other variable that needs to be sorted out: Link length!  

Both of these chains are 3/8 links. The chain on the left is 3/8 BBB while the chain on the right is 3/8 Mooring Link. BBB is calibrated to fit and run in a windlass gypsy, while Mooring LInk, sometimes abbreviated as MC for Mooring Chain, is not calibrated to run in a windlass.

What happens is, the regular links of BBB and other standard anchor chains are too close together to fit a shackle through the link in any place other than at the ends. This means that it is impossible to tie in another chain to a different anchor part way through the line. To help with moorings, MC chain has longer gaps in the link, allowing a shackle to fit in any point on the chain. This makes it especially easy to set up a Bahamian Mooring, where you have an anchor at either end of the chain, and hook your boats rode into the middle of the chain setup.  

When you purchase chain, make sure it will run smoothly through your windlass if you need it to do that. And be careful because both of these chains are listed as 3/8", it all comes down to the link style. 

Carrying Mooring Chain

Setting up a mooring to anchor your boat is a safe and effective way to anchor for extended periods of time. The only problem is you need a hefty amount of chain to do such an operation!

We carry 300 feet of 5/16" G70 chain, which weighs about 300 pounds up in the forepeak. This works well for deploying the ground tackle, but it causes some issues with weight distribution. Luckily, we are a very heavy displacement boat, so we are much less sensitive to weight distribution and can get away with adding 300 pounds to the tip of the bow.

The mooring chain we carry is 200 feet of 3/8" G43 Mooring Link, which weighs about 300 pounds as well. If we place this chain in the forepeak with the regular chain, we would then have 600 pounds added to the tip of the bow! Mooring chain isn't as commonly used as the regular rode, so we feel that we don't need the easiest of access to it. 

The infrequency of need and planned use of this chain means that it can be stowed in a harder to reach place that better centers the weight in the boat. Obviously, the most centered of places in the boat is the center of the boat, and the lower is the better; so our plan is to store the mooring chain in the bilge, next the the motor bank batteries. This place is low, centered, and still available to access. When we reach a place where we would be using it with some frequency, we can always store it on the deck until we get to the next site where we need to deploy it. 

When we have a long ocean crossing ahead of us, we can then stow it below in the bilge where it will keep the weight low and centered.

Work vs. Cruising

Deciding when to go cruising is a difficult decision that can be made very simple and easy to resolve. Cruising takes all your time. You will be away from work and unable to go to work for a long period of time. This means that you will have to decide if you want to go cruising or go to work. I know, sounds like a really tough decision so far, but it can get a whole lot simpler.

You might feel that you have to go to work because you have all of these bills to pay, and you need money to pay the bills, therefore you need to go to work. The trick is to evaluate which bills are bills for you to live and which bills are bills you pay to go to work.

This might sound ridiculous, that you would pay bills to go to work, but this sadly is the truth. Expenses like your vehicle are needed because you need a car to get to work. Without a car, you won't be commuting to work everyday, so you won't be able to keep your job. But if you don't have that job, then you don't need the car!

If you don't have a car, you don't have to pay for fuel, maintenance, and most of all, insurance! All these expenses that are tied to the car instantly disappear. At the same time, subscriptions to magazines will also be terminated as you won't be there to collect your mail.

In the end, the only real expense that you will have that is an expense of yourself is food that you buy to eat and feed yourself. Everything else becomes superfluous and is nothing more than a drain on your earnings. When you cut out all of these expenses that you incur to go to work, you will see that life is actually very inexpensive and that your money will last a lot longer than you might have first thought.

So, if work is so expensive, and cruising is so cheap, why work?