Plow Anchors

The CQR, a favorite anchor among cruisers, along with the more modern version, the Delta, are anchors based on a farm plow. The idea is simple, plows dig into the substrate and digging deep into the substrate is a desirable feature of a good anchor. The problem with plow anchors is that they are plows.

Plows are designed to dig deep into the earth and pull through it, turning the soil to prepare the land for planting. Plow anchors do the same (except not for the subsequent planting).

An anchor dragging is characterized by the anchor not holding onto the bottom and sliding across its surface. Plow anchors don’t necessarily “drag” when they are set well, but instead “plow” the sea floor. This is what a plow was designed to do!

The problem comes in when someone anchors with a plow anchor in an anchorage. Other yachts are anchored with good anchors that hold in place while the plow anchor slowly plows the sea floor. This means that the yacht anchored with the plow anchor will slowly meander through the anchorage and potentially into other yachts!
While snorkeling in Formentera, I noticed a 30 foot sailboat that was anchored in shallow sand with a CQR. I was looking for treasures in a small patch of seaweed near the sailboat and noticed that in a 20 minute period, the sailboat had moved significantly! So did the CQR anchor.
There was minimal wind and the anchor was not under any load. The chain fell from the yacht vertically to the bottom and then turned a 90* angle to make its run to the plow anchor. Under no load, the anchor was making a huge plow mark on the sandy bottom!

After seeing this, I began noticing many long plow marks on the sandy bottom. Some were hundreds of feet long! On the clear morning before any wind had picked up, you could clearly see the sandy bottom and the cross cross of plow marks left in the sand.

Plow anchors were a popular anchor when they first came out and created quite a following behind them, but their favored use was due to personal opinions and the lack of actually good anchors to choose from. Now there are modern anchors that really do hold well and keep your yacht stationary in the water.

These roll bar anchors will stay put, even as the wind changes direction or the tide reverses. They will stay where they are and keep you safely anchored to the bottom!

Please, for the sake of everyone around you, please stop using plow anchors.

Knowing where to work

For a long time, we have wanted to switch our only non-self tailing winch to one that is self tailing. This winch is on our boom and is very important while you are reefing in a blow. Having a self tailer would literally free up a hand!

The problem is new winches are expensive, so the project got put onto the back burner until we happened across an affordable winch. For 3 years, we have searched every consignment shop in 5 states, and 8 countries, all looking for the right winch.
One day in Almerimar, Spain, a fellow cruiser was having a yard sale on the back of his boat. He was changing gear and systems and selling the unused components. They had winches, but they were much too large or not self tailing, so once again, we had no winch to complete our project.
The night before they left, he came by our boat with one more winch that he was selling: an Andersen 12ST.

The family was doing some questionable modifications to their boat, such as removing all the booms from their ketch and replacing all the sails with Genoas. I know, it sounds strange and I personally don’t think it would work out too well, but he was selling the winch that was on the boom he had just removed!

Best of all was the price! They were heading towards the Americas and wanted to sell it for US Dollars, so we paid him $60 for this used but very functional winch.
Now we had the last of the components to install the winch on the boom!

I began removing the boom in the morning to mount the new winch on the side of the boom when I ran into a small problem. The screws at the front of the boom were rather seized on there. I tried to force them off and started to strip the head of the screw. I could cut the head off and replace the screw after but I needed to secure a replacement screw first.
This was the next roadblock. We are in Spain and our boat uses imperial sizes fasteners. The closest machine screw to what I need is an M6, but an M6 does not fit because the thread count is different. I stopped the project and put everything back where it was, and all the bits and pieces of the winch project will be stowed in a bag for when we arrive in a country that sells imperial fasteners.

How Long Should Your Docklines Be?

This is a loaded question with three answers to it.

First answer: for permanent docklines in your home slip, the lines should be the length from boat cleat to dock cleat and a little more to tie it off or an eye splice at either end to the exact length needed to keep the boat in the perfect position.
As you can tell, there is no set rule with this one about lengths since these are purpose made lines with one single application.

Bow and Stern: length from boat cleat to dock cleat

Spring: length from boat cleat to dock cleat

Second answer: for the day sailor or weekend cruiser, the lines should be made relative to the boat length. The bow and stern lines should be 2/3rds the boat length and the spring lines should be 1x the boat length. These lines will be used for tying up to new piers or to other boats when you are rafted up. The bow and stern lines will have a short run to their cleat and therefore don’t need a lot of extra line. The spring lines will run a longer distance for and aft so they will need to be a full boat length.

Bow and Stern: 2/3x boat length

Spring: 1x boat length

Third answer: for the serious cruiser, short docklines will not suffice. Day sailors and weekend cruisers have the opportunity to choose what weather they go out in, so they can choose to only sail on the good days! As a full time cruiser, you will be forced to sail in all the weathers: good days and awful nights! Your docklines will need to be up for the challenge.
The bow and stern lines need to be 1.5x the boat length and the spring lines need to be at least the boat length.
Why such long bow and stern lines? Imagine a horrible situation where you enter a port in the dark in a storm and manage to get the bow up to a pier where you can toss a line to shore and be held to a fixed point. You were smart and came up on the lee side of the pier but now the boat is being blown off from the pier and there is no way you can get the stern up to the pier under motor. How do you tie up in this situation? Easy! Having a really long stern line will allow you to walk the stern line up to the bow and toss it to shore. Now all you need to do is pull the stern in from land where you can get the proper leverage and angle to do so safely.
This may sound rather far fetched but we did just this one night in the Mediterranean where we were being pounded by 50 knot winds and short, close together seas. After being hammered for a day and a half, we sailed into a marina and tied up in 40 knots of wind. It was a horrible experience, but we made it through safely because we had a long enough line.
The bow and stern lines need to be long enough that you can toss it from the other position. Being able to toss the bow line from the stern or the stern line from the bow will make all the difference when those rare situations rise from the deep.
Once you are in the slip, you can then tie up the spring lines which should be at least the boats length (but longer is useful). Long lines are also needed if you sail into places with extreme tides. Tides greater than 10 feet are common on the Atlantic coast of Europe and the USA, and when you tie up to a quay and the tide goes out, you will need to constantly adjust your lines (if you tied to a close cleat). This is laborious and time consuming, so it won’t work out! You need to tie to a cleat that’s far away from the boat so that when the tide changes the line just changes angle slightly and won’t need any adjustments. Reaching a far away clear also means that you will need a long line to reach it!

An additional line that will be very handy is a Breast Line. This is a short line that runs straight out from the boat to the pier and is used to keep the boat close to the pier for easy boarding. This line is too short to setup to a fixed pier for a long time as tides will be a bother, but it can be left permanently attached to a floating pier (as the tide will not change the length from the boat cleat to pier cleat).

Bow and Stern: 1.5x boat length

Spring: 1x boat length (or longer)

Breast: 1/2 boat length (minimum 10 feet)

While many lines are convenient to have when tying up, you also need to store them when underway. Lots of thick heavy lines will get in the way when they fill up all your lazarette space! The ideal is to have 2 bow lines, 2 stern lines, 4 spring lines, and breast line.
When we are going to be in a place for a long time, especially if you are going to leave the boat unattended for a long time, it would behoove you to double up the lines. Thankfully, any marina you are leaving the boat in will probably have a chandler nearby which means you can buy some additional lines! When you finally leave the port, you can decide to bring them all with you or retire your older lines and keep the new ones.

How much work is Cruising?

The simple answer is: as much work as you want it to be.
When we started planning our cruising life, we wanted to enjoy the destinations as much as possible. This meant that when we got somewhere we would leave the boat and explore the land. To do this simple activity means that you can’t be fixing your boat when you get somewhere. We all have a finite amount of time and how we spend it is up to us. We can either be enjoying our time or repairing things with our time.
How do you fix less things? Have less things to fix!

We planned for simplicity. The less we have, the less we have to fix. The list of gadgets on a typical cruising boat is long, but the common items we hear other cruisers talk about fixing are:

1. Diesel motor

2. Generator

3. Water maker

4. Computer and on-board internet access

5. Bow thruster

6. Furlers

7. Chart plotter and instruments

8. Electronic autopilot

9. Dinghy outboard

10. Inflatable dinghy (usually peaking air somewhere)

11. Propane stove

To keep our cruising life simple, we simply did without.
Electric motor instead of a diesel, no generator, no water maker, no computer, no bow thruster, no furlers, no chart plotter or instruments, no electronic autopilot, a hard dinghy with oars instead of an outboard, and no propane stove (we did alcohol instead because it can burn a wider variety of fuels, meaning we can get fuels anywhere we go).

This meant that when we got somewhere, we were there and nothing complicated or time consuming could be broken that would distract from where we had just arrived. Well, life without is rather difficult and we kept it up for about a year, then we have in to the life of convenience.

The items we have added from the list are very limited, but we did give in.
First, we added a generator because sometimes the sun is hidden away for a long time and the batteries just need charging, especially when you have an electric motor.
The next thing we added was an outboard motor because rowing over a mile with currents and winds gets old really fast! Next, we switched from a hard dinghy to an inflatable because they are so much lighter and we can pick them up by hand to put them on the deck instead of a complicated lifting contraption. Lastly, we got chart plotters (Navionics on our phone).
All of our additions have one thing in common, they are disposable.
A built in chart plotter is expensive and goes obsolete in a few years. A plotter on your phone gets updated every time you get a new phone. This means that you have no installation and you get modern software with a simple app update.
We bought a small (cheap) inflatable and outboard that we can simply replace when they start giving us problems instead of constantly fighting a losing battle of time. The generator is also a small (inexpensive) portable unit that we can simply replace when it starts to give problems.
By keeping everything simple, we can enjoy where we go instead of slaving over the boat. As you plan to go cruising, be sure to keep in mind the reason you are going cruising. The less you have, the less work you will have and the less expense you will have!

Securing Continuous Furler Pin

The clevis pin on this continuous furler used for a Code 0 sail kept having problems. To reduce snagging, a cotter ring was used to retain the clevis pin. The cotter ring fouled on the furled Genoa and pulled itself straight! Thankfully the pin fell out after the sail was furled and lowered onto the deck. While being put into its locker, the clevis pin fell out and everything landed inside the locker disconnected, but nothing fell overboard!

To prevent this from recurring, we needed to use a different form or retaining pin. Cotter ring failed and a cotter pin would snag on too many things, so our only option left was to stitch together a retaining pin.

Using the available holes, I stitched stainless steel seizing wire through the clevis pin and back through the swivel.

On the other side, I simply sent the wire back to the primary side, until it was all ready to tie off. Once plenty of wraps had occurred, I twisted the wires together and fed them back into the swivel where they remain protected from any snags and safely tucked away.

Most importantly, the wires never tough the top of the torsion rope as the eye splice passes over the clevis pin in the swivel. The clevis pin is fully retained and no chafe occurs internationally. This retaining setup will hold everything in place while preventing any snags on sails or gear up at the masthead.