Tandom anchor...two anchor system

[thinwater]

Originally Posted by RabidRabbit

Boy this is like flogging a dead horse, I am well aware of Pete's writing. I think we are misunderstanding our 1st and 2nd anchor positions (a whos of first sorta thing) If your taking from this that I ever have 4:1 scope your not understanding me. Good ole pete is the guy who set on this tandum anchor path. Pretty sure he points out that after 8:1 scope it gets pointless and hard to change the angle of attack. Let me say again that my scope is from bow to bigger anchor 8:1, then if running tandum the additional chain (50') and anchor are shackled to the bitter end of the larger anchor not the end on deck or even anywhere on my primary chain. How is this 4:1? Its not, What I dont understand is why you feel this need to be so right, clearly making me wrong.

Relax. No personal attack. I never said anything about 4:1 nor did I say your set-up was not good. I think it is.

However, I think you did miss the point of his vector diagram. The main anchor (closest to the boat) bears 100% of the lifting force (he clearly stated that lifting force could not be shared) and somewhere between 50-60% of the horizontal load (depending on the relative size of the anchors--generally the further anchor is lighter). Thus, the closest anchor feeling an effective scope (same lift, less horizontal) somewhat less than if it were by itself. That is what the diagram was intended to illustrate. I use the tug-of-war analogy to convert this reasoning to common expereince. I did not intend to make it complicated.

Interesting stuff, made more complicated by the fact that we generally cannot see what's going on.