{"id":158520,"date":"2025-06-13T06:31:33","date_gmt":"2025-06-13T05:31:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/?p=158520"},"modified":"2025-06-13T06:31:50","modified_gmt":"2025-06-13T05:31:50","slug":"why-is-anchoring-still-such-a-misunderstood-skill-nikki-henderson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/comment\/why-is-anchoring-still-such-a-misunderstood-skill-nikki-henderson-158520","title":{"rendered":"‘Why is anchoring still such a misunderstood skill?’ – Nikki Henderson"},"content":"Back in December I reminded myself what \u2018too close for comfort\u2019 feels like. After 18 days at sea, my crew and I finished an Atlantic crossing<\/a> and parked up in Rodney Bay, St Lucia, with around 5lt of usable diesel left \u2013 barely a couple of hours run time for our 60hp Volvo.\r\n\r\nYou could look at that and consider it an example of exceptional seamanship and precise fuel management \u2013 a perfect plan. Barely a drop in the tanks more than needed!\r\n\r\nOr you may judge it a reckless \u2018near-miss\u2019. Just one unexpected variable such as a messy sea state or dirty fuel, and we\u2019d have been stuck, windless and embarrassingly fuel-less, in sight of land.\r\n\r\nWhether you judge it good or bad; two things hold fast. 1) Cut it fine and get away with it and you have a great story in the bar. 2) Dig deeper, and there\u2019ll be lessons to learn.\r\n\r\nSo, was it luck? Or a masterful plan that came together?\r\n\r\nA month earlier, I joined friends of mine on their new home: a 45ft catamaran. The boat was brand new. They\u2019d sailed her straight out of the factory to the Canaries. By the time I joined them they had a few thousand miles under their belt, and the very short list of warranty issues meant a crossing before Christmas was viable. Good news!\r\n\r\nWe prepared together for almost a week, at which point a brilliant weather window awaited us. As is my routine on joining a boat, I gathered data.\r\n\r\n[caption id=\"attachment_156981\" align=\"alignnone\" width=\"630\"]\"\" Sailing across the Atlantic into the setting sun[\/caption]\r\n\r\nOn the fuel specifically: the crew had been monitoring rpm and engine hours from new. From always running the engines in gear at 2,000rpm, and then cross referencing their logged engine hours with the diesel they added to the tanks on their first fill up in Tenerife, they knew the engine was burning 3.8lt\/1gal per hour, which matched the fuel consumption curve as per Volvo\u2019s manual.\r\n\r\nSo, we made an educated assumption that the graph could be used to accurately predict fuel consumption for lower rpms and assumed a 2.2lt\/hr burn at 1,800rpm.\r\n\r\nAt 2,000rpm the boat made 6.2 knots in a flat sea; at 1,800rpm it was 5.4 knots. The power generation was similarly significantly more efficient at lower rpm. On a cloudy day at sea, the power draw on the batteries required five hours of running the engines at 1,800rpm to bring the batteries back up to 100%.\r\n\r\nAccording to the manufacturer\u2019s manual the boat had two diesel tanks of 250lt each and 90% of the fuel in each tank was usable in practice. So, we had 450lt of usable fuel. We then added four 20lt jerry cans as an emergency reserve \u2013 which would offer us 125 miles range at 2,000rpm or 160 miles at 1,800rpm.\r\n\r\nAssuming a 28-day crossing in which every day was cloudy, we\u2019d need 308lt [28x5x2.2] for charging, and would have 142lt remaining [450-308] for motoring. That would mean 40 hours, or just over 200 miles of range.\r\n\r\nArticle continues below...<\/em>\r\n\r\n[collection]\r\n\r\nAs each day of the crossing progressed, we recalculated these figures to take into account our real-time progress, the reduction of charging time needed due to solar generation, and the future weather forecast.\r\nBut despite our meticulous planning and monitoring we encountered a few surprises. Does anything ever go completely to plan at sea?\r\n\r\nDuring a bilge inspection on day 14, we discovered a stamp on each of the fuel tanks showing their capacity was 230lt and not the 250lt stated in the boat manual. Lesson: check the tanks match the manual.\r\n\r\nOn the penultimate day, our starboard engine stopped as we\u2019d run its tank \u2018dry\u2019. So despite the manual stating that 90% of the fuel is usable, in reality it was 84%. Lesson: find out what the real-time \u2018bottom\u2019 of the tank is before you face a wind hole on day 17 of an Atlantic crossing.\r\n\r\nWe\u2019d been running our two engines in sync, to avoid one having too many more hours than the other. So, when one tank reached bottom, the other wasn\u2019t far off and there was no scope to change strategy. Lesson: avoid stressing all the systems at the same rate.\r\n\r\nThe jerry cans saved the day. We hadn\u2019t expected to use them at all. Lesson: the extra weight of the odd jerry can of fuel can save a whole load of stress.\r\n\r\nSo to sum up, assumptions and ambiguity are a sailor\u2019s worst nightmare. Test everything, never guess. And have a back-up plan.\r\n\r\n
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As the sun slipped below the horizon, so did the noise of the day. The thermal wind softened, the engine fan stopped whirring, and the last of the tourist boats swung into port. In that quiet moment of reflection that one takes at dusk, I was living every sailor\u2019s dream. We were anchored off the coast of the Hornstrandir Nature Reserve. This remote north-western tip of Iceland is only accessible by boat. Four or five waterfalls cascaded fresh glacial melt down the horseshoe of mountains and into the fjord that was our home for the night. In this isolated northern outcrop of the globe just the hardiest of sea creatures, birds and puffins went about their business on the rocky shores. Otherwise we were entirely alone. We are living in the age of hydrofoils, carbon fibre and satellites. Our world is getting faster paced and more determined than ever to leap into the future with greater efficiency. And yet, the core components of the universal sailing experience remain the same: simplicity, stunning scenery, self-sufficiency, serenity and solitude. Are we putting too much emphasis on cutting-edge technologies and forgetting the fundamentals of a good day on the water? Are we at risk of losing touch with our roots? Anchoring is \u2013 literally \u2013 one of sailings\u2019 grounding cornerstones, an ancient art that dates back millennia. Devised not long after the boat itself, anchoring began with a large rock and a rope. By Roman times the original \u2018anchor rocks\u2019 were shaped to include prongs making them more transportable and better at temporarily digging into the seabed. Article continues below… Modern anchors now have hinge points and different designs to suit boat sizes and seabeds, but they\u2019re still basically a heavy thing attached to a warp. For sailors, anchoring marks a shift from moving to being. As one of sailing\u2019s most unchanged fundamentals, are we giving anchoring enough credit? It\u2019s easy to become so focussed on optimisation, that we\u2019re perhaps brushing over those core skills. From an educational standpoint, anchoring, like many other basic sailing principles (hoisting and dropping sails, tying knots or driving by the feel of the wind on our faces), is often undertaught and misunderstood. Recently I hosted a webinar to explain how to deploy or weigh an anchor without a windlass. Many of the participants \u2013 regular cruisers and boat owners \u2013 hadn\u2019t ever been formally taught how to do it. And if they had been taught, they didn\u2019t really understand the whys and hows. I explained: sit still counteracting effects of the wind or tidal stream, drop the hook plus two- to four-times the depth of the water in chain or warp or both, fall back against it, see if it holds, and pay about the same amount of warp again. If the electricity fails, pull or ease it by hand and use a mechanical aid like a winch or a purchase system to help you control it. The wide eyes looking back at me were indicative of …Continue reading »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4389,"featured_media":154064,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[969],"tags":[1633],"review_manufacturer":[],"acf":[],"introduction":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158520"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4389"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158520"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158520\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":158521,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158520\/revisions\/158521"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158520"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158520"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158520"},{"taxonomy":"review_manufacturer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review_manufacturer?post=158520"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}