Find the anchor competition

[Deleted]

Once upon a time on Sunday 19th July Cassandra set off looking for adventure...

We were heading west on a fast spring tide when ..."what's that noise??" - the anchor making a bid for freedom in deep water mid channel! No sooner had we spotted it than we swung round on it and stopped. Well dug in I should think - we were doing 10k over the ground.

well it was bar tight of course and at mid spring tide we hadn't a hope of retrieving it ..so after tying a fender too it, I had to cut it loose.

we continued on west down toward Minehead to where I had hoped to anchor for lunch (bit of a problem there!) and then returned to it at LW. Luckily conditions had much improved and there it was, just where we left it - useful things these GPSs! I even managed to pick it up under sail.

managed to get it attached to the boat again, but couldn't haul in more than a couple of metres. We have no anchor winch on Cassandra. ..so reattached fender and cast it off again. We were now in 30m of water according to our depth sounder and it vanished out of sight What I hadn't realised at the time of course is that a small fender isn't going to hold much chain off the bottom, if any at all.

SO, anybody fancy a go? Rewards will definitely be served in the bar after its safe return!!

Here's the problem:

Its a smallish Bruce, about 15kg I think, with 30m of chain and probably no more than 27m of rope attached to a small white fender. Unfortunately, even at LW it's in 25 - 30m of water.

Its at:
N 51⁰ 21.19
W003⁰ 13.84

Thats about a mile WNW of the North One Fathom Cardinal. 6 miles out of cardiff.

I went looking for it again yesterday in grotty conditions with about 2m waves and couldn't spot it. Unfortunately we're heading back towards neaps now.

LW height of tide on Sunday was 1.9m (above charted), and yesterday it was 2.3m. The next time the water level is this low is Saturday 2nd July: 1.7m at 1421, with the lowest on that cycle being Monday 4th July: 1.3m at 1543.

If anybody spots it and can get it - great. If not, the addition of 10m of rope and another fender/buoy would mean it was more visible more of the time.

Thanks in advance for any help anybody can give.
Peter

[Deleted]

Found it! Got it!

perfect conditions - almost flat calm and a slightly lower tide this Sunday

only just spotted it after looking for ages. the tip of the fender was only about 10cm above water at LW.

It was still difficult to lift (We dragged up another old bit of rope with bits of concrete attached which wasn't helping!), but Elaine had the good idea of using one of the halyard winches. I tied a rolling hitch to the anchor rode and in various complicated maneuvers and repetitions managed to break it out. Once free of the bottom, with two of us hauling it in we managed the rest by hand.

If anybody has the misfortune to try this - remember a small fender will not hold ANY chain of the bottom.!

Cheers,
a very relieved boat borrower ..it was nearly very expensive!

[ishtar]

For the record, a one litre container will lift one kilogram of weight. For flexible containers (Fenders, mooring buoys etc) you have to remember that they start to compress as soon as they begin to pull down in the water, further reducing buoyancy.

Having said that, if it had been at the surface all the time, someone else might have picked it up, so you may have been lucky! Glad you got it back, anyway.