Bent Chain hook for Snubber

[Simi 60]

Well...........
4 years with a victory hook, zero signs of wear and never an issue.

Tried a soft shackle after the "expert's " insisted they were the go and after several 30+ bits of wind, so nothing in the scheme of things, I am not as impressed as I felt I should be.
Obvious wear, strands pulled, all looks a bit second hand.
Again, victory hook, same as its ever been.....same as its ever been.

I have no idea what that victory hook is rated for but it has seen 80+ knots on a 65 tonne+ boat.

[doublewide]

If you like a rolling hitch on your chain, you will love a dyneema Prussik even more. It should wrap the chain twice and leave a convenient-sized loop to hook the bridle to.

My bridle (catamaran) is a pair of 25-foot nylon lines with eye splices and thimbles in both ends. One end of each is soft-shackled to a pad eye a bit above the water line and the other ends are soft-shackled to the Prussik. I have been using the same Prussik and shackles for 3 years and have seen negligible wear.

[jmh2002]

@Simi 60

As I'm sure you know, sometimes it's not necessary to fix what isn't broken

Whenever these types of issues are posted there often ends up being so many mitigating factors that it's difficult to determine a clear black and white answer.

Cheap quality, wrong size, incompatibility with individual boat setup, use error, etc, etc, all play their part.

But the opposite of all of those things generally means a successful outcome, as it appears that you have had with your stainless steel Victory chain hook.

[blubaju]

Originally Posted by Simi 60

Well...........
4 years with a victory hook, zero signs of wear and never an issue.

Tried a soft shackle after the "expert's " insisted they were the go and after several 30+ bits of wind, so nothing in the scheme of things, I am not as impressed as I felt I should be.
Obvious wear, strands pulled, all looks a bit second hand.
Again, victory hook, same as its ever been.....same as its ever been.

I have no idea what that victory hook is rated for but it has seen 80+ knots on a 65 tonne+ boat.

My one was bent multiple times, stainless is much softer than drop forged high grade steel and it was always most cumbersome to tie it to the anchor chain, if not tied, the bridle liked to slip from the chain, either when paying out or on a shaky anchorage.

[jmh2002]

It's amazing isn't it? And this is what I meant by mitigating circumstances.

- One user says his chain hook has seen 4 years and 80+kn on a 65ton boat, without damage.

- Another user with the same chain hook (I'm assuming, from the wording?) bent his multiple times with a light weight catamaran.

How can it be?

[Mike OReilly]

Originally Posted by Simi 60

Well...........
4 years with a victory hook, zero signs of wear and never an issue.

I like this hook. I still use it on deck as my chain stop. It was the last one I tried in my search for an effective chain hook for my snubbers. For various reasons though, it was hard to make it work for my boat. It hasn't bent or failed, it just was hard to deploy and get it to stay on.

Once again, rolling hitches turn out to be a lot easier, and more secure, than any hook I tried.

[blubaju]

Originally Posted by jmh2002

It's amazing isn't it? And this is what I meant by mitigating circumstances.

- One user says his chain hook has seen 4 years and 80+kn on a 65ton boat, without damage.

- Another user with the same chain hook (I'm assuming, from the wording?) bent his multiple times with a light weight catamaran.

How can it be?

Maybe the direction of the load, on a mono the load is inline, the bridle in the catamaran is adjusted every time depending on water depth, sea state, room around, hence the opening is something between 20 to 120°. While 20° will not cause a problem, 120 with a rough seastate will produce shockloads, like continuous hammering. But occasional bending was not the real problem, it was the missing fixation on the chain. And maybe not every 8mm chain is G7, the victory hook undersized in relation to the chain strength, but when you buy, it is in relation to chain size.

[jmh2002]

Originally Posted by blubaju

Maybe...

Yep. Hence my previous comments about so many different mitigating circumstances:

Originally Posted by jmh2002

Cheap quality, wrong size, incompatibility with individual boat setup, use error, etc, etc, all play their part.

[BlackHeron]

Originally Posted by Mike OReilly

Once again, rolling hitches turn out to be a lot easier, and more secure, than any hook I tried.

If you can tie and untie a rolling hitch with one hand leaning way out over the pulpit to the chain below the bow roller faster than using the Mantus hook you are a much better man than I.

Hook goes over chain, slides over and down into the X-groove and then flip the plastic gate with a thumb until it engages in place. Takes literally 2 seconds one-handed either way. It goes so easy I feel the need to inspect it twice because I can't believe it is that easy.

[Mike OReilly]

Originally Posted by BlackHeron

If you can tie and untie a rolling hitch with one hand leaning way out over the pulpit to the chain below the bow roller faster than using the Mantus hook you are a much better man than I.

No, I can't. With hitches I tie them on deck, and let them roll off with the chain. I can't do this with a hook, which his part of the reason hitches are easier, and better. With a hook I have to hang over the pulpit, attach and then maintain sufficient tension while rolling out the rode.

As I already said, I've never tried a Mantus hook. It might be better than the other hooks, but it's just not necessary.

[transmitterdan]

Originally Posted by Mike OReilly

No, I can't. With hitches I tie them on deck, and let them roll off with the chain. I can't do this with a hook, which his part of the reason hitches are easier, and better. With a hook I have to hang over the pulpit, attach and then maintain sufficient tension while rolling out the rode.

As I already said, I've never tried a Mantus hook. It might be better than the other hooks, but it's just not necessary.

This is how we do it. No need to fool around putting a hook on. When the hitch comes up with the chain it comes loose easily with just a short one handed motion. And the nice thing is you can install a second snubber easily and arrange it as a backup in the unlikely event the main one should break. But a nylon snubber will stretch a lot before breaking.

[jmh2002]

Originally Posted by BlackHeron

If you can tie and untie a rolling hitch with one hand leaning way out over the pulpit to the chain below the bow roller...

That is really making life more difficult than necessary...

[BlackHeron]

Ah, so you use a single line instead of a bridle and put the whole anchor load on the bow roller instead of moving it back to the bow chocks and bow cleats.

I prefer a bridle, and not stressing the bow roller which is basically a big cantelevered lever. Our boat tends to sail on anchor a lot less using a bridle, and when there is a cross-current I can shorten one side to bring the bow more into the wind & waves for greater comfort.

Mantus makes a really nice snubber bridle but it isn't too hard to make your own. I just got a really good package deal from Greg at a show years ago. The eyes on the ends make it quick and easy to connect to the bow cleats.

But to do all that the chain hook has to be connected beyond the roller. Different ways of doing things I suppose.

[transmitterdan]

No, i use a “bridle” when expecting the wind is going to pipe up. First, I route a snubber from a starboard cleat out through a chock and then forward back over the roller and secure it to the chain with a rolling hitch. As the chain pays out the snubber goes back outside the boat and runs cleanly from the chain through the chock/pipe to the cleat. It does not go over the roller under tension. I can pay put more snubber or reduce its length easily.

If I want a bridle configuration I use the port cleat and chock the same way with a second snubber. I put the rolling hitches about a foot apart on the chain.

Bridles don’t “share the load” the way some people think they do. As the boat yaws in the wind the load is 95% on one leg or the other of the bridle. But some believe the bridle configuration reduces yawing. Empirically i haven’t found that to be the case. In fact, I sort of believe that a single snubber off the starboard or port side reduces yawing a bit. But haven’t made any scientific measurements.

[BlackHeron]

I suppose all cruisers do things differently.

We are full-time anchor-out cruisers. We rarely stop at a marina. A couple of weeks a year for necessary stuff only is all we can swing in our budget. Sometimess we stop for the night, sometimes we stop for a few days, sometimes for a few weeks even. During the COVID-19 scare we stopped for nearly 9 weeks without pulling the hook up even once.

Usually we don't know how long we are going to stop or what the weather is going to be like more than a couple days out with any degree of reliability. So every time we drop the hook we anchor like we are going to be there into an unknown future. We use our best anchor, as much scope as we can possibly get away with, the best bridle and chain hook, with a secondary chain hook as a backup should the bridle or primary hook somehow fail. We should be OK riding out anything up to and including a named sub-hurricane storm like that. We leave the hurricane zone when the season starts.

I don't believe in half measures. Every time we leave the boat we leave it like we could get into an accident, robbed, end up in a hospital, arrested on false charges, or anything weird that happens on land to strangers and not be able to get back to the boat for days. We don't ever half-donkey anchor unless it is an emergency drop, and even then we fix it as soon as we have the emergency taken care of.