Selecting anchor rode for a canoe...

On 13 Jun 2006 07:52:59 -0700, "Monk Terry"
wrote:

>A few thoughts-

Thanks for the input. Sorry; I didn't see your reply until today.

>1. That is heavy for a 14 ft. canoe. The canoe itself is maybe 25 kg?

28kg unladen. But up to 450 kg laden. I will rarely, if ever, need to
be fully laden. 300kg is about my typical laden weight, and the
freeboard is then about 9" minimum, I guess.

>hope it is just you in a 14' canoe. If so that means you have a very
>heavy load. 38" Beam tells me the canoe is built for a pretty good load
>- What kind of freeboard do you have with that kind of load???

I've never had it fully laden, so it's hard to say. Not much freeboard
when fully laden, perhaps?

>2. What is the average depth of the waters you will be paddling?

Unless I ignore everyone's advice and venture out of the harbour
(which was what I had in mind when I first posted this question), the
average depth is less than 1mtr (because of vast areas of shallow
water, with one long 6m dredged channel). A lot of it is 2 or 3 mtrs
at high tide.

> If you
>really need to anchor, you will need a good height to length ratio.
>E.G. if the water is 20 meters you will want 60 meters of rope.

I have a long lenth (60 mtrs!) of 4mm braided nylon rope and I also
have 20mtrs of 8mm braided nylon rope. I guess that would be ideal for
this harbour, Do you agree? (My anchor also has 4 mtrs of chain
attached.)

>3. Those opening grap anchors are Ok but not great.

I've just been given a similar but bigger one by a friend. It seems to
work well, as long as the angle of drag is suitably small. My 2hp
outboard motor was unable to pull it along, once it had dug into the
bottom.

> I would get an
>oversized anchor (danforth) and put 6 ft of chain on it. With that much
>weight you will need better holding power than what your anchor has. It
>does depend on the bottom which is ??

It's a clay-rich silt. Probably more clay than sand. It doesn't rinse
off the anchor very easily; I have to dislodge the stuff from it by
hand.

>4. The 4mm rode should be fine and tying them together with a
>fisherman's knot should be fine also. Ideally you should have a well
>supported bow ring maybe 6 " off the water. Otherwise you will have to
>attach your rode to the seat strut which in heavy weather would not be
>good...

I was wondering about that. I was wondering if it might make sense to
make a loop of rope that runs underneath the hull, say 1/2 way along
the hull, to which the anchor rode is attached at the midway point,
underwater. Then, if a large wave comes along, the boat is less
inclined to be pulled over sideways by the (in effect) downward pull
of the anchor - as might happen if the rode was attached to the boat
above the waterline. What do you think? Another idea I've considered
is inserting a length of 1/2" shock chord between the canoe and the
start of the rope, to hopefully allow for any such extra movement.
This is beginning to sound more and more like an assignment for a
marine engineer!

>Good luck- It sounds like fun!

Thanks again,

Al Deveron
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