Breaking Out a Kedge Using the Dinghy

[TrentePieds]

Re #9

Excellent stuff - thank you :-)! Much to be learned from men who didn't have fancy doodads to keep their butts safe :-)!

At five tons TP is but a toy ship, and our bower is a Bruce, an anchor it seems to have become fashionable to disparage, and the "kedge", if I may call it that, is a Fortress, which I have a hard time coming to respect. I carry a very big, very heavy shackle that I can set around the rode. It will slip over the shank of both anchors [one at a time, of course :-)] as it goes down, and a line on the shackle becomes a trip-line when the shackle reaches the flukes. In theory :-)

Should work, but on the one occasion when I needed it, I couldn't trip the hook. Laboured away at it by "nodding" TP and using a sheet winch till the chain appeared, thence a "devils claw" on a whip. The problem turned out to be a sunken mooring can we had "circumnavigated" in the night so our chain was nicely wrapped around its chain.

From there on the solution was easy enuff: Sling the "sunken" can and the Bruce from TP's mooring cleat that passes for a samson post, cut the rope rode, unravel the two chains bringing TP's on deck together with the hook, let go the can, get under way, re-splice the rope to the chain.

Probably needed a new nip anyway :-)

TP

[Pete O Static]

Kedge anchors benefit greatly from trip lines. If you don't wish to "float" the trip line just feed it back along the main rode with a rolling hitch.

To retrieve, run along the rode with the dinghy, until reaching the trip line. Untie rolling hitch and then use it and the dinghy to retrieve the anchor.

Using the main halyard instead of a winch for pulling off a shoal will make things much quicker. It will also relieve excess twisting at the keel root of deep draft fin keels.

[Don C L]

Originally Posted by TrentePieds

I carry a very big, very heavy shackle that I can set around the rode. It will slip over the shank of both anchors [one at a time, of course :-)] as it goes down, and a line on the shackle becomes a trip-line when the shackle reaches the flukes. In theory :-)


TP

I'd have to see photos or a movie of the shackle going over the shank and then working well as a trip line, especially if the shank is slightly buried. I suspect it won't and may just come sliding back up the rode, unless you are pulling straight back on it, not up. Even then I am skeptical because some of the force is trying to rotate the anchor up, which it won't do. At least for me with Danforths I am confident that when I pull on the trip line, especially when I am pulling straight back on it, it will eventually come out. EXCEPT I will say, set deep in mud, no probably not, not with the dinghy. Then you'll likely need a lifting bag and a scuba tank of air.

[thinwater]

Lots of traditional answers that we all know.
a. A tripping line does NOT reduce the force on Fortress buried in mud appreciably. I've measured this, and I believe Fortress has as well. Those big mud palms act like barbs on an arrow, and you loose the leverage of the shank. It will help if you are actually fouled.
b. Sliding a shackle over the shank of a Fortress buried in mud is... dubious. The anchor and shank are several feet underground.
c.

I've used time and tension, typically in the form of weight shift, cleat-off, and time. I've also used the "run over the anchor" method, but a dinghy has little mass. So far, I've always been able to pry it loose, even anchors set with over 1000 pounds of force. But I'm always looking for a better idea.

BTW, the worst one was freeing a boat from a grounding. No, there was no alternative to tension the anchor in shallow water. The boat was on the edge of a shallow, narrow channel, and by the time there was reasonable scope, the anchor was on the other side of the channel in 2-3 feet. Yup, stuff like that happens. We did have to get another guy in the dinghy to help with the weight shift, but it popped lose in 5 minutes.