Anchor chain Bavaria 38 Holiday?

[Twhitt]

We are moving our 38 Holiday from Sardinia over to Greece this summer.

Currently have just 30m of 10mm chain on anchor, and am replacing with new. Thinking of 100m of 10mm, but not sure if anchor locker will cope with this length?

Anybody else have 100m, or is this too much?

Thanks

[Yngmar]

Length: 100m is too much. We have 70m and only needed that very rarely in extreme situations (twice, I think, in two years of liveaboard cruising). It's convenient to have all chain in that situation, but I'd probably aim for 50-60m if I was buying again and use rope to extend in the rare case where more is needed.

Size: 10mm is bigger than you need on a that boat. Downsizing to 8mm is a pain because of the windlass gypsy, but the weight saving is considerable. If you're worried about breaking strength (and you shouldn't be), you can go for high tensile (G70) chain. Anchoring loads are typically overestimated though.

Apart from the weight saving, less chain means it won't pile so much in the anchor locker, which is mildly annoying.

I've blogged a bit about our ground tackle here: https://sdfjkl.org/blog/2018-11-14-maggi-aqua7-anchor-chain/

[Symphony]

Agree. 100m is far too much and 10mm chain OTT. We kept our 37 in Greece for 10 years with 50m 8mm with 30m 14mm spliced on the end. Most anchoring is in shallow water as anchorages are on the shelf close to shore after which depths plunge so anchoring no feasible. If you use town quays as most people do then they are also shallow. The normal approach is to drop anchor 3 boat lengths out and reverse up to the quay. Rarely will you need your full 50m, and the rope is there if you need it. Suggest you also make up a snubber for anchoring and also try anchoring with a line to the shore, which is also common. A new generation anchor is advisable as many bottoms are hard which is difficult for anchors like a CQR.

Hope this helps.

[Craig]

I agree with Symphony and Yngmar regarding link size. 8mm is perfectly Ok for boats up to at least 42 ft. The Catenary effect of heavy chain is a myth. ( see article attached)

Unlike the previous advice, we have 100m of chain on our Bav 38 and we have found it useful. When Med mooring we always put out much more chain than recommended because we were always concerned about cross overs of chain with neighbouring boats. By having 50 or more metres out we were certain to have our anchor away from neighbouring anchors. If we did cross another boats chain, we would turn our engine on, engage forward gear and release additional chain. The engine would then hold our boat out from the quay. The neighbour could then pull up their anchor, take our chain off easily and then re drop it. We would then tighten our chain so that we could turn off the motor and drink more wine.

100m of 8mm chain easily fits in our anchor locker and we don't have to poke it down. I suspect that 100m of 10 mm chain would not fit without poking down. Also, many windlasses are set up for chain only, not chain and nylon rode.

Always invest in a bigger anchor rather than larger chain.

Most of the anchor tests showed the CQR ( Plough ) anchors not performing well, even though they are the most common anchor in UK, Australia and elsewhere. The anchors with roll over bars may be more prone to having a ball of weed or rock caught and not resetting if pulled out.

We rode out winds up to 75kn at anchor for 3 days during the Bora in Pula, Croatia in February 2010 with 40 m of 8mm chain in 5m of water, gradually increasing the chain length to 80m. We put out a second anchor on about 15m of chain to stop the yawing and to reduce the loads when the boat swung from one "tack" to the other.  Our anchor is a standard 20kg Kobra and the second anchor was the CQR that came with the boat. We were only 200m from shore so there was no wave action. The chain was so straight it didn't touch the water for a number of boat lengths in front of the boat. We fixed a snubber to the forward cleats and had lines from these cleats back to the main winches as a precaution. We have since replaced our CQR with a fortress on nylon rode only. We believed that if we ever needed to kedge the boat out, we could swim out with the fortress and set it easily.

Craig
"Shirley Valentine"
Gold Coast
Australia

[kavok]

 On our 40 Cruiser 2008: 75 Mt 8mm grade 70, Wichard 5400 b. l. shakle, 20 kg Rocna anchor, two rope snubber on the cleats.
It will be  OK(teorically) until 50 kts wind.

[Rampage]

On Rampage we have 80m of 8mm chain, used the full length a couple of times coming back on to a quay where we dropped too so....   We’ve sat out 65 knots plus of wind in both Greek and Spanish waters with no troubles at all on that gear.  As others have advised, 10mm is simply too heavy for th boat to be able to carry a sensible length of rode.

[Lazy Pelican]

We have a B39 with 8mm chain. We managed perfectly well with 50m until we got to Greece. We now have 90m x 8mm. We’ve never used the full length but wouldn’t want less than 80m.
We did try adding warp to the original 50m chain,  but found this very difficult to manage with the windlass when Med Mooring.
So my advice replace your chain- I got mine from Stephenou Marine in Piraeus- they’ll send it to wherever you are for very little cost.

[Ricd]

10m too much and 10mm to heavy...certainly go for 8mm chain