Rope Rode - What Type (do you have)? What would you prefer?

[estarzinger]

Originally Posted by YachtBroker

If you have to go with line, Buy THE best plaited anchor line you can. It stays soft and is stronger than 3 strand. However, It may not give as much.

jfyi . . . . . size for size plait has more elasticity than 3 strand.

[David M]

Nylon, you really need something that stretches. Nylon will stretch 40% before it breaks. It's also not an exotic material that costs a fortune.

It's also slightly denser than the surrounding water, so it sinks which is a good thing. This makes it light compared to chain which is also a good thing.

Nylon has a greater strength to weight ratio than chain...a good thing if you do not want more unnecessary pitching (more moment of inertia).

Put a length of chain roughly the length of your boat to resist chafing. The sharper or coarser the bottom you intend on anchoring on, the more chain you will want.

8 and 12 yarn line will stay pliable for longer but the downside is that it is harder to splice.

[JOHNMARDALL]

We recommend chain rodes for long distance cruisers and 8 strand nylon brait plus chain for local cruising and day sailing. As stated by others, brait will settle itself flat in your chain locker, with no bird's nests or hockles to jam your rode the next time you need to drop anchor, and is much better than 3 strand twist.
However, I'm really responding to the comments about snubbers. Once the anchor is set and the rode paid out appropriately for the depth, it is vitally important to take the load off the windlass with either a snubber or a chain stopper. Anchoring on the windlass, especially in big waves, chop or strong winds will put more stress and strain on the gearbox than years of raising and lowering the ground tackle. The same applies to using the windlass to move the boat up to the anchor instead of motoring forward while the windlass retrieves the ground tackle.

I hope those comments are helpful,

John Mardall
Vetus Maxwell Group

[toddster8]

I can't claim to have enough experience to contribute much here. But nobody seems to mention carrying rode for a drag device - drogue or sea anchor. Nobody bothers with such things? Anyway, I drank the kool-aid and have 300 feet of double-braid for that purpose, along with a bridle line I made up with a snatch block and float. I've only used it once on a test-deployment. Seems to flake nicely, but it is relatively bulky and quite heavy. One of the things I take off the boat when I'm only going to be day-sailing for a while. Can shackle on some chain and use as conventional rode for backup or kedge.

Primary is 20 feet of chain and 200 feet of 3-strand nylon. Pros: It's lightweight, relatively affordable, and worked great the one time I had to kedge off a sandbar. Cons: doesn't flake well and doesn't play nicely with the windlass (see rope to chain splice thread). I plan to demote it to secondary when I save up enough quarters to splurge on all-chain primary.

[alctel]

I have 60' of 5/16 chain but the majority of my rode is this stuff (350ft) giving me a total of 410 foot of rode. Useful around here where the anchorages are often 60ft+ deep.

60' of that 5/16 G4 chain and 45lbs of anchor are the max I can pull up by hand, so I can't have all chain (I don't have a windless)

I also have a secondary rode of 210ft of 3 strand 3/4" that used to be my primary rode that I use for a secondary anchor (with 10ft of chain) and also as the rode for a drogue

[YachtBroker]

Thanks Evans S. I thought the plaited did have more elasticity than nylon but didn't have the info with me.

[thinwater]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

If a snubber is sized correctly to do its job -- which is absorbing a lot of energy -- then it will naturally be vulnerable to internal heating and sudden failure....

I'm sorry, but I'm going to call this out as a myth if the nylon is properly sized. The long version is in the post below, this is only a summary:

• If the rope is properly sized, it will be operating at <10BS and will not heat unless very, very large. Period.
• If the rope is operating over 10% BS it is going to fail from fatigue. Nylon is bad that way.
• ALL nylon ropes melt when they snap due to energy release and low melting point. I have pics of brand new ropes that were pulled once, slowly during testing, and the ends melted. Many people mistake this for heating.

The bottom line is that if you take the actual energy dissipation and do the calculation, it simply is not enough heat to warm the rope. Sorry, but this is a myth, unless the rope was working so hard it had no chance anyway. It has also been suggested that chafing gear adds to the problem, but first, the chafe gear was on an edge and there was friction, and be, the line was over worked.


The solution is to size the lines properly and to make them long enough. The challenge is to find proper guidance. I have published several articles that included measuring rode and dockline forces and sizing lines accordingly. Length matters.


Sail Delmarva: Can Nylon Rope Melt Due to Load Cycling --- Myth Semi-Busted

[thinwater]

Originally Posted by estarzinger

jfyi . . . . . size for size plait has more elasticity than 3 strand.

Data please. I'm not at all sure this is true, though it is repeated a lot. It is more elastic than double braid.

* NER shows it brait at 10% elongation at 20% BS.
* NER 3-strand is 12% at 20% BS.
* Climbing ropes, which have the very highest energy absorption capacity, have a type of twisted (not plaited) core. Elongation to break is about 85-110%.

NER also claims a WLL of 20% BS for brait, which is absolutely unsupportable, nothing more than advertising puffery (9% is the ABYC nylon WLL--other engineering standards agree).

There is always variation between weaves, and some are better, I'm just not sure this is "rule."

Nylon Brait / Eight - Strand Plaited Nylon Rope | Yale Cordage

[estarzinger]

Originally Posted by thinwater

Data please.

My own testing . . . . both static and dynamic (which is probably more important)



I'm just not sure this is "rule."

Yea, ok, I can buy that. I guess I would say there probably is generally not much between them. And I did not do much testing of the dynamic climbing line - I can buy that it has more elasticity.

........

[GrowleyMonster]

Originally Posted by David M

Nylon, you really need something that stretches. Nylon will stretch 40% before it breaks. It's also not an exotic material that costs a fortune.

It's also slightly denser than the surrounding water, so it sinks which is a good thing. This makes it light compared to chain which is also a good thing.

Nylon has a greater strength to weight ratio than chain...a good thing if you do not want more unnecessary pitching (more moment of inertia).

Put a length of chain roughly the length of your boat to resist chafing. The sharper or coarser the bottom you intend on anchoring on, the more chain you will want.

8 and 12 yarn line will stay pliable for longer but the downside is that it is harder to splice.

12 strand isn't hard to splice... just time consuming. You can do it right, or you can use a simple Chinese Handcuff splice and that will hold just fine. 8 strand is dead easy, and fast. After a partial breakaway on a Ro-Ro I once made eyes in the ends of four 10" 8-strand mooring lines between 0800 and coffee time. (That's 0950 for you non union guys) Small stuff like yacht anchor rode can be done in a few minutes. With 8 strand you could easily crown the strands through the end link and backsplice them, with a taper after the 3rd tuck, and have a very nice chain splice. Don't be put off by the number of strands. I use 3 strand only because it is cheaper than 8.

[estarzinger]

Originally Posted by thinwater

I'm sorry, but I'm going to call this out as a myth if the nylon is properly sized.

Are you arguing against Dashew's conclusion re para-anchor rode? Or only in the snubber application? or?

[UNCIVILIZED]

Originally Posted by GrowleyMonster

12 strand isn't hard to splice... just time consuming. You can do it right, or you can use a simple Chinese Handcuff splice and that will hold just fine. 8 strand is dead easy, and fast. After a partial breakaway on a Ro-Ro I once made eyes in the ends of four 10" 8-strand mooring lines between 0800 and coffee time. (That's 0950 for you non union guys) Small stuff like yacht anchor rode can be done in a few minutes. With 8 strand you could easily crown the strands through the end link and backsplice them, with a taper after the 3rd tuck, and have a very nice chain splice. Don't be put off by the number of strands. I use 3 strand only because it is cheaper than 8.

Do you happen to have a link to some online instructions that you'd recommend for doing said above splicing? It would help the less rope inclined types of us.

[Emouchet]

39' sailing boat. 8 tons.
120' 3/8 G4 chain
120' 5/8 3 strands nylon
When anchoring on chain only, I usually add a snubber made of 2 lines 16' 1/2" 3 strands nylon around a 3/4 mooring rubber snubber.

[moctrams]

I use anchor line from the Cajun Rope Co. in Canada. It is costructed from nylon material and has served me well.

Anchor Line

[BigBeakie]

Evans,

Re the Dashews conclusion of the nylon 3 strand breaking under cyclic high loading, I think on thinwaters blog he suggests there may be a misinterpretation of the observation of melted nylon strands. He suggests that when nylon is broken due to having been overloaded, the enormous release of stored energy is what melts some strands. So it is an effect of, not the cause, of the failure.

I would love to see this hypothesis tested because Im trying to decide on which rode for the para-anchor for our new 50' cat.

What do you think of this causal vs effect aspect of nylon melting?

PS. Is your site going to be up again soon, pleeeze?


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