Cruising Sailors Forum Archive

Re: Comments please on windlass performance / 60

meters is about 200 feet. 5/15 chain weighs about a pound a foot (1.1). So, that's about 200 pound. Add to that the 45 pound anchor. I've got a pretty burley anchor windless and I sure as hell ask it to pull 250 pounds off the bottom. Who anchors in 200 feet and asks their windless to un-anchor them anyway? My maximum is about 60 feet and that's only if nothing else is available. I had a friend who's anchor windless break slipped on a passage back up the Baja coast. He had just left Cedros island and it payed out 300 feet of 3/8 triple B. Luckily the break just slipped and he didn't have a run a way. He could have lost the front of his boat. He finely had to cut it free.

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