Hey Tom,

Was out bottom fishing in pretty deep water --where the big cod and rockfish are-- with all 200' of chain out and about 100 of rope. We were in a quasi-open area, open to swells, and not in a protected anchorage. Everything was nice and calm while I fished, then the wind and swell started to build...thought, time to get out of here.

Brought in the rope with more or less no problem, though it can be a pain since it needs to be wrapped many times around the rope drum on the left side of the windlass so that it doesn't slip. OK, honestly, it can be a bit more of a pain than that...but I've forgotten all that now ;-)

When I got to the rope/chain splice, that's when the problem began, since it was pretty swelly by then with the bow almost going under... Normally, with the rope part of the rode on the drum, on the left side of the windlass, we just bring the rope splice up to and on (or just near) the chain wildcat, as there is little or no load (no big swell) on the rope/chain. Then I slip the chain hook from our snubber on the chain just ahead of the rope/chain splice and use that for leverage/grip, to hold the whole rode while I (quickly) transfer the load from the rope drum on the left, to the chain wildcat on the right.

However, with the growing swells, bow almost going in the water I was simply overpowered, and couldn't move the rode from the rope drum to the wildcat. The bow is starting to really pitch now. At some point in this operation, the boat really pitched and sucked my hand under the bail over the bow roller that keeps the anchor from jumping off. My hand was stuck there, and it hurt (a lot). I called for Leah...no answer. A little louder...louder still. Finally she heard me (the downside of an insulated boat...and normally we're both on deck when raising the anchor...not this time) and rushed forward. I managed to extract my hand, pretty heavily pinched but only bleeding a bit ('it's only a flesh wound' Ã la Monthy Python).

Anyway...without dripping too much blood on the rope, I had to quickly devise a way to transfer the load from the rope drum to the wildcat, and ended up using a climbing knot (prussik hitch, which is a friction hitch --thin cord wrapped around another rope in a certain way, grabs it very tightly, like a rolling hitch on chain) to grab the rope and attach it to our very solid bow pulpit, so that I could then get the chain hook/snubber line on the chain...but then with the bow pitching somewhat wildly, I had to use another prussik on the snubber line to control it in order to get the chain on the wildcat! Not sure if you follow me --but it wasn't controlled until we improvised the prussik system to transfer the load from the rope side of the windlass to the chain side. We sat there somewhat worriedly scratching our heads trying to figure out how to get the anchor up...

I'm sure there's a simpler "way" to do this, but it sure isn't in my yellow and dogeared ancient SL Seatiger 555 manual windlass manual. Anyone know? I'd never really appreciated how difficult it could be not being able to put the rope/chain splice on the wildcat, since in a blow or big swell you need to safely transfer rather large loads from one side of the windlass to the other. (Nope, a new electric windlass is not in my budget ;-) )

Jud