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.
