Still in Brunswick, GA - Painting the anchor chain

March 17, 2017

Miles Today:  0 NM

Total Miles: 298.6 NM

We’ve read that the route through the Georgia can be one of the most challenging on the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway.  The tides rise and fall as much as 8-9 feet, the currents can be quite swift and the constant movement of the sand and mud on the river bottoms creates very shallow depths (shoaling).

You must time your passage to enter known shallow areas at higher tide and that dictates when and how fast you can travel – get to a trouble spot too early and you can find yourself up the creek – literally!  Best case scenario, you go aground on the soft bottom and wait until the incoming tide lifts you off.  But if you go aground when the tide is receding, you could be sitting there for 8 or more hours.

Added to all that, there are only a couple of marinas from Brunswick to Savannah and many are several miles off the ICW, so ‘anchoring out’ one or two nights along the way is usually in the plan.  And the most important piece of equipment: the anchor and how it is attached to your boat.

For much of the East Coast waters, we need an anchor that sets quick and deep in mud or sand – and stays put all night.  There are a lot of different anchors and if you have nothing better to do, just ask a boater for their opinion about which anchors are best and be prepared to have your eyes start to cross.  We decided to stick with the Bruce anchor that came with the boat.  Bazinga has done the Great Loop two times with this anchor, so we feel pretty confident about its capability.

There have been many, many books written about anchoring and how much ‘rode’ (chain and rope) to let out when you deploy your anchor.  To give you the Cliff Note summary: 5:1 is good for most non-storm conditions; 7:1 and 10:1 for extra holding in inconsistent conditions or heavy weather.  That means for every foot of depth you are in, you put out 5 or 7 times that length of chain/rope.  So, if you are in 10 feet of water and the top of your bow (front) where the chain begins is 5 feet off the water – use 15 feet as your depth.  Multiply 15 by 5 (or 7 or 10, depending on conditions) and that’s the amount of chain/rope you should deploy.  However, also remember to factor in depth changes of 7-9 feet due to tides - especially in Georgia and South Carolina!   

There you are at the bow of the boat, dropping your anchor and heavy chain into the water and watching it disappear.  But how do you know how much chain you’re letting out and when to stop?!

Paint the chain!  Pull alllllll of the 250 feet of very heavy chain from your chain locker and string it out along the dock. Find several old cardboard boxes and use spray paint to mark specific lengths.  Now you can keep track of how much chain is dropping into the water.  We chose red, white, blue and yellow in 25 feet increments.  Then repeat until the end.

If you’re the mate on the bow and letting out the anchor, there’s all kinds of arm movements you need to know to tell the captain when to move the boat forward, back, to the starboard, to port, Stop.    I got into trouble for erratic arm movements in the past that Jim interpreted not too kindly (ok, maybe I thought he wasn’t paying attention).  We decided to invest in headphones and now we communicate with each other ohhhh sooo nicely.  

Lay out all 250 feet of chain

Spray every 25 feet with a different color

Be creative and paint with psychedelic flair at the near-end of the chain to clearly get the point across: STOP!