Proper care of anchor chain

[sher9016]

I have 4 anchors, but only ever use one of them. I use the Mantus 85 lb anchor with 275 feet of 3/8 inch 'G4' chain exclusively. My question is, how to care for the chain? I always anchor out, never use marinas or mooring balls so the chain is always in use; sometimes in the water for several months at a time. I manually clean it when I pull it up, but feel it needs more than just a scraping occasionally. I suppose I could take a ball for a day or two while I put the chain on deck and really clean it, but how to clean it? I have heard people using bleach, but is that OK for fiberglass deck? What about Muriatic acid? Or is just a brush and dish washing soap OK? Do I need to do more than just brush it as it comes up?

I would really like to hear what others do to keep their chain in good shape.


Thanks!

[billknny]

Doing nothing is a good plan.

Certainly muriatic acid is a VERY BAD idea, it will attack the galvanizing zinc, and then go to town on the steel underneath.

Bleach is a bad idea, although not going to cause as much trouble as fast.

Soap would not hurt anything, so if you are feeling compulsive, go to town with it.

The only thing you NEED to do is regalvanize when the zinc starts to wear off and you start to see rusty steel.

[Hobiehobie]

We just bought a new chain, 300 ft of Hi Test G4 Acco. We intend to look after it by trying NOT to put it away with any mud. When possible, we are going to wash it down with our newly installed FW hose at the bow and keep the anchor locker free of dirt and salt. Definitely NOT paint it to mark the depth, as our previous chain got VERY rusty ONLY where it was painted. We use parachute cord of various colors woven between the links to mark the depth. We'll see how it goes.