Quite a lot accomplished yesterday. Having prioritized my project list (61 items long) and determined what near term progress can be made on the higher priority items it was off measuring, buying, checking, going back to store to exchange items and get new and, in some cases, actually get into doing actual installs. In between all this I was off with Jim to do customs/import work on our collectively imported chain and our new anchor.
During my second trip from the marine store I heard from Jim that we could go and collect the 960lbs of chain and anchor from the depot. A truck had been arranged for this and once we had made our bus ride, final round of paperwork/payments we had our two drums of chain and anchor. Trying to manhandle 450lb of chain in a round drum proved to be impossible so we got them off the truck by tipping them over and rolling them off. We couldn’t even roll them up a plank onto our trolley to get them to the dock so we had to pull the chain out of each drum, put the drums onto the trolley then hand the chain back into the drums. This was all reversed at the dock to get the drums off the trolley.
Using the lengthy dock we were able to mark up our chain before handing it into the dinghy. Our last bit of effort for the day was to then haul the chain out of the dinghy into a forward locker we’d cleared. We were able to use the bow chain roller for this which made life fairly easy relative to all the earlier hauling.
This didn’t leave much time to get on with the projects we had on the list. However, I did replace the furler line (existing one is too short) and as one project was simply to acquire a fuel filter for when filling the fuel tanks I have been able to mark two projects as complete as well as marking off some partial items. It’s all progress and it feels good.
Project work finished in time to shower and get over to Sweet Caroline (Carol & John) for cocktails. We were joined by Diter who is also in the lagoon. We bumped into him back on Tyrell Bay outside In Stitches so we already knew each other. A 5pm cut off for projects seems so reasonable that we’ve invited them back to Dignity today.
I have been asked why we’re buying new anchor/chain so here is the rationale. On board we already have two anchors. The one we use all the time is a 44lb delta, which works very well, with 200ft of chain. The chain is 2 years old and a bit corroded but still serviceable. The second anchor is an aluminium jobby that has about 30ft of chain and 100ft of line. It can hold Dignity in light conditions but all we’ve ever used it for is a stern anchor to hold Dignity in one spot.
Issues:
- If we’re caught in a real blow and need extra holding power by having two decent anchors out we can’t do it.
- If we need to anchor in more than 50ft of water (which we will in the Pacific) we can’t do it.
- If we have a fouled anchor and can’t retrieve our main we have no effective spare.
- Our anchor chain is probably good for 2 more years by which time we’ll have to buy a new one.
To solve all these issues we’ve imported 300ft of new chain and a 57lb anchor. This is one of our bigger projects to complete as we’ll need a second windlass, a second anchor holder, some separation for the anchor chains, etc. We’ll probably swap over to the new chain / anchor while we’re on dock in a few days time to get the better holding power just in case we get a blow down here. The new anchor, by the way, is a 57lb manson.
