Don't Get Lost Without a Good Anchor Chain

Dave and I were planning an Alaskan sailboat trip. The overall plan was to borrow his brother's 37 foot ferro-cement sailboat, the Advena, fix it up a bit for that type of journey, sail it from its dock in Wrangell north and into Glacier Bay, then sail out the Icy Straits and up the outer coastal waters in the Gulf of Alaska to Lituya Bay, and then back down to Sitka and back to Wrangell.

The first thing that you have to know about a ferro-cement sailboat is that the hull is made of concrete - with steel reinforcing rods to hold it together since concrete, while strong in compression has very little strength in tension. While it floats very well, and was perfectly water tight due to the paint that was applied to the outer surface, it is a very heavy craft that just lumbers through the water. Definitely not a racing boat - but also very definitely a very stable platform to operate in rough coastal waters. We lovingly came to call it our "floating driveway."

The first thing that you need to know about anchors is that most fair weather sailing is done from, and back to, a dock, where an anchor is not required - although many have aboard a "lunch hook" for short term anchoring during the day. However, more serious overnight trips require a more substantial anchor. The normal anchor system consists of an appropriate length of line (rope to you land lubbers), attached to a short length of heavy chain to help hold the anchor in the right position, and a suitable anchor for the type of bottom to which you are going to anchor. Line is normally used since it is much lighter than chain, and more easily pulled back up and stored. However, while this approach is excellent for anchoring in sandy or muddy bottoms, it is fraught with problems when anchoring in tidal waters with steep walled rocky bottoms , for the constant tidal motion pulling the line across the sharp rocks would cause it to wear - with drastic consequences if you lost your anchor. As a result, it is common practice among Alaskan fisherman, to only use chain for their anchor line.

Knowing this about anchors, Dave bought a new anchor chain - specified as 1/2 inch for the diameter of the metal in the chain links, and 30 fathoms long (that's 180 feet for you landlubbers who don't know that a fathom is the mariners term for six feet). In addition, I procured a new manually operated anchor winch since we didn't want to have to depend on electric power.

Installation of the new anchor winch was a snap, if you like that kind of deck work, and don't mind working in the rain that occurs on most days in Southeast Alaska. However, getting the new anchor chain to the boat turned out to be a different challenge. As you might guess, a chain of that size and length weighs about 500 pounds, a weight that was beyond the capacity of the two of us to handle. Fortunately, the marine chandlers shop had a fork lift that was able to load the heavy box it came in onto the back of our pickup truck and we were able to transport it to the boat dock area. There we faced a new problem, for the tide was out, and in Southeastern Alaska that often means that the boat docks are at the bottom of a ramp having a 20 foot drop at low tide. While we might have been able to slide the box down the ramp (if we had been able to get it out of the truck) we were worried that it might slip sideways and go over the edge of the ramp into the briny deep. However, it then occurred to us that we could simply back up to the ramp, pull one end of the chain out of the box, and pull it down the ramp. Of course, once enough weight of chain got out of the box and was going down hill, the chain would continue to pull itself out of the box and snake down the ramp. So, as a precaution, Dave restrained how much of the chain could be fed out until I had secured the free end on the back of the truck. Then he let go, and the chain started slithering down the ramp, as I hurriedly did my best to keep ahead of it by pulling on the lower end to flake it out on the lower level dock. And Voila! We had the chain on the lower dock without even getting any of it wet. It was then a simple job for the two of us to merely pull it like a snake along the dock and up to the Advena. (Fortunately, we didn't have to pull it around any corners.)

Our trip into Glacier Bay was delightful, with sightings of large chunks of ice calving off of the glaciers, avoiding ice bergs, and intentionally collecting small floating pieces of ice to both keep our freshly caught fish cold and to chill our evening cocktails, but that is another story - since this story is about our anchor chain.

We then went out the Icy Straits into the Gulf of Alaska, with an overnight stop at the delightful little fishermen's haven of Elfin Cove, and proceeded up the coast to Lituya Bay.

For those that may not know, Lituya Bay is famous for two things.

First, it is a long narrow channel, with snow capped mountains rising steeply on each side, and a very narrow entrance from the ocean. While it is a very nice protected harbor, to which the fishermen often run to get out of storms in the southern Gulf of Alaska, navigation of the entrance has resulted in a number of major mishaps in the past since the 20 foot tidal ebb and flow causes tremendous currents at the mouth - except at slack tide, when it is perfectly safe to enter or leave - if you are careful to follow the newly established channel markers that are located on the shore.

Second, the long narrow waterway ends at the foot of the Fairweather mountains, so named for the fact that you can never see them except in fair weather. Of course, these are the same mountains that drop down into Glacier Bay on their eastern side. As you might expect, the western slopes leading into Lituya Bay are also covered with huge magnificent glaciers. Further, once every other decade or so, there is an unusually warm day, or an earth tremor (this is located on the Pacific Rim earthquake fault region), which causes an avalanche of ice to fall off into the water. The last time this happened, in 1936, the ice fall was so huge that it created a tremendous tidal wave - in an outward direction. The magnitude of this tidal wave can best be described by the fact that it scarfed the trees off of the mountains on the edge of the water to a level of 490 feet high. (If you don't believe this, just look it up in a copy of Land of the Ocean Mists, by Francis E. Caldwell, Alaska Northwest Publishing Company, 1986. Check your library; it's currently out of print.)

So after we sailed up the coast to Lituya Bay, using our engine during the last leg so that we could arrive at slack time, we safely entered the harbor and anchored about a mile inside. The steeply sloping mountains keep on going down below the water as well as above, making our anchorage rather difficult - and requiring several attempts before we were convinced that we were safely hooked to the sloping bottom.

As we were having cocktails, and congratulating ourselves on our safe entry. we noticed that we were the only boat in the bay. However, suddenly a smaller power boat entered the harbor and approached us at our anchorage. It turned out to be two members of the Glacier Bay rangers staff, up for their once a year two day inspection of this National Park, and they wanted to both be sure that we were OK and that we knew how to safely navigate back out when we were ready to leave.
That night was one of the worst nights on the trip. The weather was calm, but the ever changing tides made us drift first one way and then the other on our anchor. It turns out that this caused me to be awakened several times with the sound of our anchor being dragged across the rocks - not exactly what a sailor likes to hear in the middle of the night with no visible landmarks to tell you whether you are about to drift onto shore.

However, upon further inspection, we weren't drifting at all. What was happening was that our anchor chain was continually being dragged across the rocks, and the taut anchor chain was transmitting the sound up the chain and causing our boat hull to act as a sounding board, amplifying the sound many times.

Later on, we decided we had better get a snubber, something like a very strong two foot rubber band, to connect the anchor chain to the boat so that the sound would not be transmitted to the hull - and we could sleep in peace. However, I am still convinced that the selection of that all-metal chain line was the best decision we ever made in our selection of an anchoring system for this adventure trip.

Contributor Gene Dyer brings more natural (and unnatural) observations to future issues of Get Lost Magazine.