Rigging Modern Anchors

If you have read this blog for any length of time, the name Drew Frye will be familiar to you.  If not, then I will tell you that Drew is an individual that takes nothing for granted.  For Drew, rules of thumb are fine, being derived from long experience handed down over the centuries, but  conclusions and rules derived from hard data are better. And Drew goes out and collects that data.

Bearing this in mind, know that Drew has written a book, based on hard data, about anchors and anchoring techniques.  Here is what he says about it:

"Working with a bricks and mortar publisher to get this in print has been a lengthy process for me, but well worth it. It encouraged me to dive far more deeply into the technical side than I might have for my own needs, and the result is the most technically detailed book on yacht anchoring written. And I don't feel I'm bragging unfairly. I simply did the work. [...] I spent years with a load cell, digging around in the mud. Hardly glamorous, but science is mostly about diligent work."

Rigging Modern Anchors

First print edition, 2018, by Seaworthy Press. About 156 pages.

I've been setting and trusting anchors with my life (climbing) and my boat (sailing) for 35 years. I've been testing and documenting anchor testing for 5 years, and I've spent the last two sifting, collating, and analyzing all that I have learned. The result, I believe, is a complete description of what is actually going on below the waves, not just descriptively or as oral history from an old salt, but with numerical back-up everywhere I could provided it. I hope it helps. I know I sleep better. From the back cover of the book:

“Rigging Modern Anchors” demystifies anchoring with today’s modern anchors. Through years of systematic testing, Drew Frye has produced a new benchmark of understanding based on empirical data instead of anecdotal wisdom, passed down from one sailor to the next without proof or deep understanding. In “Rigging Modern Anchors” we dig deeply into the how and why of anchoring, using hard numbers as our foundation.

Included are in-depth discussions of anchoring basics, loads, scope, and the effects of cyclical loading, soil consolidation and bottom characteristics on holding power. Special attention is given to problem bottoms such as very soft mud and rock. There are anchor-specific observations, discussions of tandem anchors and rigging methods, plus an extensive appendix containing test data, open source designs for bridle plates and anchor turners, strength and toughness for various chain types, anchor connector recommendations, anchor sizing guides and more.

Proper anchoring technique, rigging, and gear selection is vital to the safety of ship and crew. Instead of hoping your anchor and rigging scheme will hold, read “Rigging Modern Anchors” and be sure.

 

This book would fit nicely on any yacht's bookshelf, and would provide good reading evenings when the wind is howling outside...

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Update!

If you have Amazon Prime or Kindle Unlimited, the book is available for free for a limited time!  Here's the link.

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Rigging Modern Anchors

Sailor, and now Author

Drew, a frequent contributor to Practical Sailor and to our own Small Boat Projects, has branched out - he is now a published author!  Aside from making a few bucks to cover his time and effort in producing these books, Drew is paying it forward; he is giving new and less-experienced sailors the benefit of his extensive experience.

Drew, as an engineer (disclaimer:  as am I), has a precise, unambiguous writing style.  But he will also wax poetic, in the fashion of a man who has carefully examined his own motivations.

What is rare in the sailing genre is that Drew, again being an engineer, does not shy away from experimentation.  He does not accept "everyone knows" without actually testing it himself, rigorously.  What Drew reports is derived from first person experience and experimentation.  If he says it, he's tested it, and you can believe it.

So far, there are four books in the bookstore:

• Keeping a Cruising Boat on Peanuts
  PDF, Pending 2017 Kindle, about 400 pages
• Rigging Modern Anchors

  Pending 2017, TBD, about 250 pages.
• Singlehanded Sailing for the Coastal Sailor

  Kindle, 143 pages, PDF, 154 pages
• Faster Cruising for the Coast Sailor
  

  PDF, 183 pages, Pending 2017, Kindle, about 200 pages

To provide a little view into what's included, here is the Table of Contents from Singlehanded Sailing for the Coastal Sailor:

• Acknowledgments 4
• Preface 7
• Part 1: The Singlehander
• Chapter 1: The Reasons We Go Alone 11
• Chapter 2: The Costal Philosophy 14
• Part II: Preparations
• Chapter 3: Docks 21
• Chapter 4: Sailing 24
• Chapter 5: Safety 41
• Part III: Practices
• Chapter 6: Sailing 63
• Chapter 7: Safety 74
• Chapter 8: Living 80
• Chapter 9: Kids 85
• Chapter 10: Summer 87
• Chapter 11: Winter 88
• Summary 100
• Glossary 102
• Appendix I: Annual Inspection 103
• Appendix II: Tethers and Jacklines 108
• Appendix III: Rainwater and Water Filtration 122
• Appendix IV:  Climbing the Mast, Ladders, and Falling 136
• Appendix V: Extension Ladders and Webbing Ladders 141
• Appendix VI: Stropes 148

Come on, you know these books are going to make for wonderful reading at anchor!

Sailor, and now Author

Free Waggoner Guide

[Sadly, as far as I can tell, this is no longer available]

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If you're like me, it is possible that you didn't know that one of the most popular cruising guides to the Northwest is available for download, for free!  Deb, of s/v Kintala (currently on Florida's gulf coast) brought this to my attention - thanks Deb!

The guide downloads as a color pdf (Portable Document Format) file, which should be viewable on any operating system or device.  My copy is going onto my kindle and my iPhone.  What about yours?

Free Waggoner Guide

The Curve of Time, Revisited

Think back...  Do you remember the third grade?  Where the teacher, at her wits end at the end of the day, had you kids put your heads down on your desks and spent the last half hour quietly reading to the class?   Old Yeller and Charlotte's Web are still stuck in my head from that experience.  And it was an experience...  it was much more than the story alone.

Several years ago (have I been blogging that long?), I reviewed The Curve of Time by M. Wylie Blanchet (ISBN 1-58005-072-7).  I strongly recommend that you go back and re-read that review now.  We'll wait for you to come back.

OK, you're back!  Now that you have the flavor of the book in your mind, this isn't strictly about the book - it is about a new audio version of the book, narrated by Heather Henderson.

I highly recommend this audio version to you.  Why?

• The experience of listening as someone reads to you is subjectively different than reading yourself. 
• At anchor, with your eyes closed at the end of the day, Heather's reading M. Wylie Blanchet's words soon becomes M. Wylie telling you the story herself...  it becomes a much more personal experience.
• This lyrical book lends itself very well to this presentation.
• Jane and I finally experienced the book together.  When we were reading the print version we had to share experiences in series.  

This has been a wonderful companion for us this summer adrift in the Pacific Northwest, in the San Juan Islands.

Now put your heads down on your desks...

The Curve of Time, Revisited

The perfect boat book

You know that wonderful anticipatory feeling you get when you first crack the cover of a new book?  You've set aside some protected time, you find a comfortable place to settle, provision yourself with the necessaries (some munchies?  a glass of wine?)... and then you open the book and dive in, letting the author take you for a ride.

Well I've been having that feeling a lot lately, and yet Eolian isn't riding any lower in the water.  That's because for my birthday, Jane gave me The Perfect Boat Book®:  A Kindle!  (After 40 years, she so knows me.  Thank you Jane!)

For the cruiser, a Kindle has some wonderful characteristics:

• It will go months on a battery charge - the only time it uses power is when you turn a page.  In fact, when you open the shipping box, you will find your new Kindle is already displaying the first page of the Users Manual, showing how to plug it in and charge the battery...  It can do this because no power is used to display a page. 
• Charges from 110VAC or a USB port
• It can hold literally thousands of books
• It does not require a connection to the internet (except to obtain new books)
• As well as buying books from Amazon, you can also download free books from a host of sources, and you can even check out books from your public library
• It is completely readable in bright sunlight - exactly like a book

(For the cruiser, I think the newly announced Kindle Fire gives up some of these important characteristics - most notably battery life and local storage capacity.)

If you should be gifted a Kindle (or buy one for yourself), you will want a cover for it.  Here's a piece of advice:  Get the cover that Amazon designed for the Kindle.  It is far superior to anything out there.

• When in the cover, the Kindle is just about the size and thickness of a paperback book - it is very comfortable to hold
• It contains a cleverly hidden but extensible LED light (draws power from the Kindle - no additional batteries required)
• The Kindle is attached to the cover - not by clumsy straps which go over the display corners or somewhere, but by two metal clips which engage slots on the left side of the Kindle (aside from attaching the cover to the Kindle, this is how the power gets to the LED).
• The cover is well-padded and just enough larger than the Kindle that if it were dropped on edge, no damage to the Kindle would result.

So I have The Ideal Boat Guitar®, and now The Perfect Boat Book®!

The perfect boat book

Gunkholing in the San Juan Islands

Gunkholing - (noun) The fine art of cruising from one small cove or anchorage to another, arising late and arriving early.

If you ever plan to cruise the San Juan Islands, you need to get a copy of this cruising guide.  It is the definitive reference (at least as far as I am concerned) for cruising the San Juans.  Jo Bailey and Carl Nyberg have spent their entire lives cruising in the Islands - even if you start now, you have no hope of accumulating the equal to their experience.

This book (ISBN 0-944257-04-6) should be on your boat in the summer, and if you are not a liveaboard, it should be on your coffee table in the winter.  It can guide your dreams and plans in the winter, and then guide you in the summer.

Here's a typical description, of Parks Bay, one of our favorite gunkholes.  See if you like their description better than mine:

Parks Bay is about 0.5 mile long and 0.2 mile wide, a secluded spot, the waters reflecting the deep green of surrounding trees.  This is a place where yours might be the only boat at anchor.  Mariners in Parks Bay tend to be quiet, picking up the tranquil mood of the bay.  Several tiny, shallow coves filled with submerged piles and old deadheads are fun to explore by small boat. 
This is a favorite anchorage among local boaters, who prefer a small quiet bay to a crowded harbor.  The best anchorage is the south end of the bay in 3-8 fathoms.  There's good protection here with a mostly mud bottom.  Although North westerlies may blow in, most of the time it's pretty calm.  There's room for perhaps a dozen boats, but we've never seen that many.

It is a delightful gunkhole.  Herons stand for hours on long stick legs on the rocky shores of Parks Bay, waiting for snacks to swim past, darting their long beaks into the water for an instant meal.  Eagles soar on huge outstretched wings high above.

There are no public tidelands in the bay, and the entire shore is posted "Scientific Research Area.  Positively no trespassing on tidelands or uplands, and no dogs."  This is a University of Washington Biological Preserve on about 1,000 acres.  The land was donated by the Ellis family: brothers Henry and Bob, both deceased, and Fred, who lives on Shaw Island.  A pier near the head of the bay on the east side belongs to the UW, Friday Harbor Labs.  It has a shed and an occasional small boat tied alongside.

The north end of the bay has a notch in the corner, east of a small penninsula, where we've also anchored in about 6 fathoms.  It's more exposed to wind and waves from San Juan Channel, and there's room for just one boat in here.  Sunsets and moonrises from this little cove are stupendous.

From long experience, I can attest to the accuracy of that description. Of course, they have pictures and charts to go along with the descriptions.  We really like the background and local color that they give - it brings the places to life and fits them into history.  With the descriptions, rather than locations, they become places.  They come alive for us.

We've worn out our original copy of this guide and are now on our second copy.  That ought to say something to you.

Gunkholing in the San Juan Islands

Read FREE!

Now seriously, what could be better than free?  Well, free *and* good is better.  Here in the Pacific NW, we have a multitude of free boating magazines that are distributed to the various chandleries and marinas, available free for the taking.

Our two favorites are:

48° North

This is a non-glossy publication, devoted pretty much exclusively to sailing and sail boats.  In it each month, sailing in the Pacific NW is encapsulated.  Racer?  Yup, all the latest results and standings.  Cruiser?  Yup, there's a section or three each month on various cruising destinations and gunkholes, much like my destinations posts, but way better written (my pictures are better!)  There's "Galley Essentials with Amanda", always an interesting cooking idea, tailored to the galley, not the trophy kitchen.  News from the business of boat brokers, chandleries, and other marine-related business.  New products. Well, just about everything you might want.

And if you are looking for a boat, the want ads in the back are a wonderful resource.  In addition, 48° also catalogs all the boats offered by brokers, organized by length.  So, if you are looking for a 27 footer, this is a great place to go to see a summary of what is available at the brokers docks.  (But go to the docks!  It's a wonderful day that is spent looking at boats!  And the brokers want you there - really!).

48° also has a web presence.

Northwest Yachting

The showpiece of this large format magazine is the cover art.  Each month a spectacular, luscious (really, that word does apply) photograph by our own Neil Rabinowitz (Neil lives on Bainbridge Island) fills your eye.  And evey month, the editors play with the title - it's always something - sometimes pretty subtle.  This month it is obvious - the bow of the boat is in front of the title.

Northwest is devoted pretty much (but not entirely) to power boats.  But since few sailboats are truely sail-only boats, there is a lot of crossover.  And both are boats, after all.  Much of the gear featured applies equally well to both power and sail.

Northwest has a large want-ad section in the back, and also has an organized catalog of broker powerboats.  Northwest Yachting also has a web presence.


I think if you are a power boater, Northwest Yachting is your magazine.  If you are a sailor, then you will enjoy both magazines.  We are very fortunate to have these two fine publications offered to us free every month.  Go get a copy of each, and do some dreaming.

Read FREE!

The Curve of Time

I feel like a high school student writing a book report. Back then, the objective was to please the teacher and get a good grade. But now, my objective is for this to inspire you to find a copy of this book and to read it.  I don't know if I can make that transition...

The book is The Curve of Time, by M. Wylie Blanchet (ISBN 1-58005-072-7). If you cruise the Pacific Northwest waters on your own boat, or if you do it vicariously from your armchair, or if you would just like to look thru a window into this region as it existed in the 1920's and 1930's, you want this book.

The book is autobiographical; it describes the adventures Ms. Blanchet (Capi) experienced while cruising with her 5 children and a dog aboard Caprice, their 26 foot powerboat.  That is it, in brief.  It is a lyrical and yet detailed view of a storyland world.

But that is too succinct.  I mentioned lyrical - here is a short quote from the forward to tempt you:

"Time did not exist; or if it did it did not matter.  Our world then was both wide and narrow - wide in the immensity of the sea and mountain; narrow in that the boat was very small, and we lived and camped, explored and swam in a little realm of our own making..."

In 1926, Capi's husband, Geoffrey Blanchet, went out on a day trip on the boat.  He did not return.  Caprice was later recovered. But rather than sell the boat, which had to be a constant reminder of the tragedy, Capi instead made it her summer residence.  That says a lot about the woman.  She was courageous, with a will of iron.  Those would lead you to picture a "Rosie the riviter" kind of woman - and you would be wrong.   Capi was not by any means "rough"  -  instead she was by many measures a most civilized person.  She brought an artist's eye to what she did, how she viewed it, and how she recorded it.

The Curve of Time was recommended to us by David and Linda aboard Northern Explorer.  They had a dog-eared copy aboard that they pulled out when they were cruising up north in Desolation Sound, reading from it to each other the passages and chapters relevant to their current locale.

You would not think that a woman who would repair a broken distributor with a hairpin would write like this (randomly chosen passage from page 54, writing about an abandoned Indian village):

We stayed three days in that village; anchored three nights beneath the trees-of-the-dead.  After all, if it were the whispers and echoes of the past we wanted - here they were.

But we left on the fourth day on account of a dog - or rather a kind of dog.  There is always the same kind of peculiar silence about all these old villages - it is hard to explain unless you have felt it.  After wandering and sketching there for three days, without seeing a sign of anything living except the ravens and owls, a little brown dog suddently and silently appeared at my feet.  There is only one way of getting into the village - from the water by the beach.  The forest behind has no trails and is practically impenetrable.  Yet, one minute the dog was not, and then, there it was.  I blinked several times and looked awkwardly the other way...  but when I looked back it was still there.

I spoke to it - but not a sound or movement did it make - it was just softly there.  I coaxed, but there was no sign that it had heard.  I had a feeling that if I tried to touch it, my hand might pass right through.

Finally, with a horrible prickling sensation in my spine, I left it and went down to the beach.  As I reached the dinghy, I glanced over my shoulder to where I had left the dog - it was gone!  But as I turned to undo the rope, it was on the beach beside me.
[...]
Later in the morning I said to John [her young son] - John had been waiting for me in the dinghy at the time -

"John, about that dog..."
"What dog?" interrupted John, busy with a fish-hook.
"That little brown dog that was on the beach."
"Oh that!" said John, still very busy.  "That wasn't a usual dog."

I left it at that - that was what I had wanted to know.

OK, I admit that choosing that one passage cost me a lot of time - I might have read a quarter of the book in doing so.  It really pulls you in.

I will leave you with one final passage to savor - the first words of the first chapter.  Get the book.  It is wonderful. Reading a chapter out loud, at anchor, in the evening is like a dessert - rich and fulfilling. Get the book.

On board our boat one summer we had a book by Maurice Maeterlinck called The Fourth Dimension, the fourth dimension being Time - which, according to Dunne, doesn't exist in itself, but is always relative to a person who has the idea of Time.  Maeterlinck used a curve to illustrate Dunne's theory.  Standing in the Present, on the highest point of the curve, you can look back and see the Past, or forward and see the Future, all in the same instant.  Or, if you stand off to one side of the curve, as I am doing, your eye wanders from one to the other without any distinction.

The Curve of Time