Bridal at anchor or .....?

[zeehag]

as you folks affix your wedding woman annd her veil and attendants to the chain and through the hawse, which end do you send first, head or feet?? does she make a lot of noise??? is her white dress obnoxiously in the damn way all the time???? does she need a shower???
and that steel plate---where on her do you screw that in??? might be a while before sex for ye.

PULEEEZE guys get it right. is not BRIDAL, for ducks sake, speel it rite.
BRIDLE just like on a horse. NOT the freeking woman in a white dress, bridal. get your words correct. , makes a lot more educated post.

there is a bigg difference between a woman wearing white and her attendants (BRIDAL) and a BRIDLE which is used to control the horse or boat you affix it to.

[Pelagic]

For me, the primary value of an anchor bridle is to lower the pivot point of the chain as far below the bow stem as is practical.
This gives you a shallower break away angle when the chain snatches up hard in a blow and the bridle attachments to 2 cleats, reduces the veering.

Being low it also protects the bow and dolphin striker from chain damage

I use a simple heavy plate with a slot to catch one link of chain, so it jams under tension when it takes the strain, but easily falls away when you retrieve the chain via windlass.

Have used slotted plate a few times in typhoon conditions, without it accidentally slipping.

This photo shows it deployed

[Pelagic]

Originally Posted by zeehag

PULEEEZE guys get it right. is not BRIDAL, for ducks sake, speel it rite.
BRIDLE just like on a horse. NOT the freeking woman in a white dress, bridal. get your words correct. , makes a lot more educated post.

LOL...I thought W ebster was the last word in grammatical and spelling correctness...... but we forgot the word according to ZEE....funny!

[zeehag]

as for anchor bridle, i use one even in flat water anchorages--even wind causes ill effect on my sprit if given the opportunity. dont need to load the sprit, bridle lessens load and prevents yawing at anchor.

pelagic, babee, i am glad ye see the humor..
i keep anything bridal off my boat and away from my presence.

[carstenb]

Originally Posted by thinwater

If you can grind in enough chain with the windlass to get the soft shackle within reach (the Mantus bridle is 30' long), then there is no reason to cut it. It is not under tension. I don't understand the scenario.

----

T

If you need to get the hook up in a hurry and it is dark (for example) it can be faster and easier to just cut the damned thing and continue reeling in the chain

[arsenelupiga]

Originally Posted by sailormed

Is this the one you were referring to? This one is from Osculati in Italy.

yeah, I use one of these - use dyneema to tie to middle cleat. After I ruined my anchor winch when raising anchor in strong winds. And then doing manual for couple of months.

Now I respect winch and protect it from any sudden force by locking to chain and let bit of chain so it takes all the force. Also when pulling anchor out, loads can be large. Now no stress on winch. So far worked flawlessly in all conditions.

[Pelagic]

Originally Posted by zeehag

.

pelagic, babee, i am glad ye see the humor..
i keep anything bridal off my boat and away from my presence.

Me to, dear Zee......I bridle at the thought of anything bridal ...

So glad you survived that sneaky hurricane ...hope all is back to normal...... they recover fast here in the Philippines.

[skipgundlach]

Originally Posted by bobofthenorth

Just guessing but I expect what you have is the same as we have, an Ultra chain hook. Ultra Chain Grab

Ours will usually trip off the chain when it hits the bow roller. When that happens it hangs free with the bridle. On the rare occasion when it stays attached it clears the bow roller and I release it before it gets to the chain locker.

Yup.

I thought it staggeringly expensive, and yet so absolute in its function that I sprang for ours at the only time I've seen them in a show.

Your experience duplicates mine exactly, though 'usually' is 'mostly' - maybe more than half the time it will bounce off as it comes through the roller. But it stays on there if I maintain the least amount of pressure on the snubber on the way out.

How I'd attach it in a bridle, I don't know, in our arrangement; we've never used a bridle - only snubber. But our snubber is 20' long and will stretch impressively as we back down, and launch us forward when we get off the throttle

[zeehag]

ty pelagic. life goes on. folks lost roofs..makes my measely lil losses seem picayune. turismo is in full swing--that part was repaaireed asap, within a week, seems,... private homes still not roofed.
i am sooo cheap i use plain old rope make a rolling hitch on the chain an d ta daa..if it breaks i am lazy enough just to add another . when i haul anchor, all comes into boat just alll together too easily.. then i have to un-knot the nmess and go from there-- but i can do that after i get the smelly dirty muddy rusting and shell encrusted anchor and miles of chain i use out of the clam beds and continue on. isnt as difficult to un-knot the stuff as it seems.
i had hardware type bridle and that didnt work well for me. wouldnt come thru hawse. that was changed.

skip i can picture your rubberband anchor techniques in cartoon style. fun!

[thinwater]

Originally Posted by carstenb

If you need to get the hook up in a hurry and it is dark (for example) it can be faster and easier to just cut the damned thing and continue reeling in the chain

Actually, with a hook either action is instantaneous. If you have to leave the chain, it is the chain and anchor that matter, an you will get it all back later, you hope. And the cost of the hook is not a factor, given this is hypothetical and not usual. So this is not actually a decision factor.

I've used a rolling hitch, soft shackle, common chain hook, claw, and mantus plate. In rough order of convenience, for my boat:

1. Mantus hook
2. soft shackle
3. chain hook
4. claw
5. rolling hitch

In my case only, the Mantus hook and soft shackle get extra points for locking on; though I can get a common hook to stay, it is less convenient and will fall of if the bridle rests on the bottom. While this is something we should try to avoid (chafe), it can happen. The rolling hitch locks, but it is slower than the others. Sorry.

[zeehag]

first rope around chain. rolling hitched,. worked well. then i ws talked into a hook.. ok tha tkept unhooking as boat faced rough chop in anchore=ages unorotecte from e=weather, such as in la cruz de huanacaxtle, nayarit,and zihuatenejo.
then i bought anothe rmagical itzgonnawork item that failed first time out.
] now i use line. line is replaceable.
i donot marry it, nor do i expect line to last long thru rough chop. i inspect daily and occasionally more often.
as for hurriedly pulling anchor in a good breeze, say 25 kts, alone in an anchorage with rocks 3 ft off transom???
yeah btdt.
you arent hauling any anchor in that situation. you are driving boat away from rocks and into anchor chain as fast as your little heart can beat. and faster. they gettin closer no matter what ye do.
this is not desk sit conjecture 101 a, here, this is reality 303b.
if your **** dont rise and make it thru your hawse, roller, wtf solo, you may need to rethink retrieval methods.
mine is effectively hand over hand. you would be surprised at what a l.o.l. can do once assist arrives... without asssist-- drive the hell away from the danger and re anchor with another different anchor, preferably from a different direction than primary, aka fail, anchor.
if someone dragging down on you, you are not hauling anchor. you are fending off that drag queen. yeah i btdt also.
remember i been around a few years.
this is age 7 "eleanor 101a" stuff.

[leftbrainstuff]

A carabiner is not sufficiently load rated and does not have a secure closure. We consider our ground tackle a safety critical system. This mandates we only use safety critical components.

Use a chain hook with a sufficiently elastic line. Its properly load rated and is much easier to remove and reset than a carabiner.

Sent from my SM-N900T using Cruisers Sailing Forum mobile app

[noelex 77]

In anything much above mild wind it is a good idea to take the load off the windlass. If you have all chain rode this can be done with a chain-stopper or short snubber.

If the wind picks up to moderate or above and all chain rode is used, some stretch should be added to the system. Nylon stretches, but to achieve enough give, quite a long length is needed - around 10m (30 feet). My preference is to deploy this whenever I anchor. It saves getting up at 2am if the wind picks up unexpectedly.

The snubber can be attached to chain in many ways. Personally I have found a rolling hitch occasionally slips in severe conditions. A Prusik loop is better and a Dyneema soft shackle better again. Chain hooks are another option but I have heard occasional stories of them bending and jamming under severe conditions so make sure it is a sturdy hook. Soft shackles are tough to beat, if you have a tame mermaid to make them .

Deploying a bridle with ropes port and starboard helps reduce shearing, but the effect for many monohulls is small. (The added beam on cats makes a bridle on cats much more effective) It is worth experimenting on your own boat, but don't compromise the stretch which is the most important factor. In strong wind there needs to be in the order of 10m of nylon somewhere in the system.

Snubbers connected to the stern cleats are worth considering. The long length gives lots of stretch without letting out 10m of rope to tangle with the chain and abrade on the bottom. Soft shackle "turning leads" (to midship cleats etc) makes this more practical. The nylon can also be usefully be replaced with short lengths of Dyneema on potential chafe spots such as when the snubber passes through fairleads or the bow roller.

A snubber attached at the stern is not practical on some boats and it is another deck line to trip over, but it does reduce a lot of the drawbacks of a long snubber.

In very strong conditions two snubbers (with one as back up) are worth considering. Thin snubbers give the most stretch,but there is little UTS reserve. If one breaks there can be a high snatch load and working at the bow in strong conditions is at best very unpleasant and can be dangerous in extreme conditions.

[Hudson Force]

I like the bridle with long shock absorbing lines to both the starboard and port. I don't want to put any effort into fixing it or detaching it from the chain. I want to be able to take up my chain rode and have the bridle fall clear away from my rode. This is my solution:




I lift the two lines to engage the hook when deploying the last feet of chain rode and it falls away when my windlass takes the slack loop out of the chain. ....simple!

[AnchorageGuy]

Originally Posted by pcmm

I still prefer a rolling hitch as a method of attachment for the snubber. never worry about being unable to disconnect, you can end-for-end the line to spread wear. and is free!!

Agree, We use this as our regular attachment to our snubber and we do anchor much more than most. Chuck