Just got a phone call from the coast guard ...
It's a good idea to leave a note with contact information on the boat. Just before I left my boat by anchor now I did indeed hang up a paper on the inside of the window with name, phone number and email address. I was going to try to mark the dhingy a bit as well, to be honest I'm more concerned about the dhingy than the ship - despite the dhingy being attached to land with chains in a calm place while the ship is out by anchor probably through gale conditions. I do have an oversized anchor after all.
Here is how the ship has been left:
And the dhingy was left like this, locked with a chain (see also my previous blog post):
So, today, all out of the blue I got a telephone call from Kustbevakningen. Horrors out of horrors - why are they calling me? Did something happen with the boat? Do they need me to move it ASAP? (I'm quite far away, and I've booked return-tickets only for Friday morning). What a suspense! It felt like it took ages to get through the formalities (confirming that they got through to the right person and that I indeed do own SY Solveig, and they asked me where I'm now).
It turned out, some neighbours had called and expressed concerns since there was this boat anchored up in a "weird place" with nobody to be seen for a couple of days. Boat was fine. The people at Kustbevakningen seemed happy to learn that the skipper was well and alive, had everything under control and was planning to return to the boat and continue the journey ... and I, of course, was very happy to learn that everything was OK with the boat and the Kustbevakningen was OK with the boat lying there waiting for my return.
Phew! :-)
Well .. never leave your boat at anchor even if you are sure that nothing will happen.
I sailed alot in Greece and saw a lot of boats slipping or loose stuff... They slip aside you - everyone is asleep, so you fill a plastic bottle with water and thrown it on their deck ;)
Mostly the crew was in the taverna somewhere. Since even my boat broke loose 3 times now - even with diving to check the anchor, long long chain, I leave it just for a very short time and return quickly if the wind changes.
So normally I keep someone on board, having a watch over things ..
I know this sucks, but wind and waves are a bitch - I could never leave my boat for some time at anchor without direct access in like 15 mins or so. Actually I get the feeling, that Neptun is playing a game with me, breaking loose, rocks 30m behind me , slipping, cockpit full of relaxing stuff (wine and beer). trying to pull up the anchor, catching some mooring from the ground, pushing from the rocks, cutting the mooring to be able to get a way. And all this "action" within 10 minutes from calm sea to 8BFT directly against in the anchor bay. Welcome to greece ! I also had this in the baltic sea -- of cause at 4am :(
Actually in Italia and Croatia, there exist a lot of bays, where it's forbidden to leave the boat with noone on board ... wonder why ;)
I usually leave my boat by anchor most of the summer season at different places, never had problems with that.
30 kg Mantus anchor with 50 metres 10mm chain, for a 44 feet / 13000 kg boat. I pretty much trust the gear. The few times the boat has been moving after I thought the anchor had set, there has only been some few metres of movement. To me it seems like the Mantus doesn't set as immediately as the Rocna, but it does set, and it sits.
There has been some cases where the anchor didn't want to set at once due to bad anchoring conditions, but anyway, the boat eventually stopped moving. Oh, and once ... very embarrassing ... I was delayed for a quick pick-up, now how much anchor chain does one actually need for being away from the boat for ten minutes on shallow ground and good anchoring conditions? I probably threw out some 15 meters of chain, but I had forgotten to check the depth. It was closer to 20 metres. The boat, with my kids in it, drifted happily until it stopped by the outside of a marina. Luckily it was a relatively soft landing, didn't see any scratches in the varnish despite no fenders were used. Luckily there were no boats moored up on the outside (actually a sign there, mooring forbidden). My 6 years old son was pretty upset with me ...
Heh, that's a nice story ;) As long as nothing happens to the boat I would call it a learning curve ;)
You said Mantus anchor? Could you please look a this video starting around 3:38
I've tried to figure, what kind of anchor this is, but when I google "Mantus" this one looks like one? Am I correct?
Since I want to take one year off (starting August 2019) to sail over the atlantic to the caribbean, I'm looking for a better secondary anchor, which is good for sand and not too big to store...
Right now I have just a (huge) admiralty anchor as 2nd anchor. I guess it weights around 30..35kg, but I have no experience how it may hold at the grounds you may have at the caribbean :/ I think it's way to overkill having such a big anchor at a just 35ft boat with a mass of just 5.5 tons ;)
Such old-fashioned anchors are mostly useful for decoration ... and it's always easier to store them on land than on the boat :-)
haha - this comment made me laugh ;)
Actually I bought the boat with this anchor, but I'm looking for a replacement
Yes, that's the Mantus. I've heard the Fortress anchor is the ultimate anchor for sandy conditions, it has the best grip-to-weight-ratio in sand, and is easy to stove away or set using the dhingy. At the flip-side it's expensive, it doesn't work well outside its sand-bottom-niche, one has to be careful with the scope while it's setting (put out too much chain/rope, and it doesn't work as intended), and it's fragile - it's easily getting twisted.
Alright .. I can find this thing only with shipping from the US ...
and in US is Trump and his stupid taxes ... That means "Good bye Mantus"
284$ shipping - no way. I'll look for an European product. Maybe a CQR...
Been there too, and decided not to buy Mantus due to the excessive shipping costs, but to rather buy a Rocna from my local supplier. The local supplier was sold out of Rocnas of my size. Eventually I found some other local supplier that were reselling Mantus anchors for a reasonable price.
The Mantus is pretty unique that it can be screwed apart and stored or shipped in a flat package, but personally I just needed a bow anchor I could trust, so for me Spade, Rocna and Mantus was pretty much the same - it all came down to the question of getting as much anchor as possible for as low price as possible.
By now I believe there are also some European anchor (perhaps in Slovenia?) manufacturers that are producing Rocna-style anchors, but I can't find back to it. The French Spade is also a magnificent anchor (always scores best in all anchor tests done by French boating magazines), but is also quite expensive.
I wouldn't buy a plow-style-anchor (CQR), unless the purpose of the anchor is to plow the seabed :-)
With this boat I had a bruce before (or possibly a copy) and with the previous boat I also had a bruce clone. From my experience, if the bruce is sitting, it is sitting. I would trust a decently sized Bruce to hold the boat when anchoring on mud, and it handles changes in the wind direction as well. In other conditions than mud, I have experienced drifting with it, and I've also heard rumors that the anchor can easily get "disabled" if the claw gets filled up, i.e. by a big rock, seaweed or other junk.
From what I've understood (carefully reading several reviews and meta-reviews, and lots of user experiences on the web), Rocna, Spade and similar sorts of anchors are really far better as all-round anchors than the elder designs.
Hmm .. Bruce. Actually here in Europe (Baltic or Mediterranean Sea), I've seen Bruce anchors mainly at motorboats.
On sailing vessels Fortress of Danforth and 2nd anchor, Main anchor is often a CQR (Pflugschaar) or Rocnar.
However, the Rocnar was the worst main anchor I've ever had on a boat.
And for secondary anchor the Danforth (which is very similar to the Fortress tho). I had a bit more wind in the bay ~30kn and had the boat at 2 anchors. A CQR and a Danforth. After the night the Danforth was bend :/ even that it was made from 1cm Steel..
You mean Rocna? I did a quite thorough meta-study some years ago, and came to the conclusion that Rocna by far is superior to the CQR or any other anchor of plow-design. Boat owners report that it sets very fast and that there aren't any problems with it. It's very rare to read about situations where the Rocna has failed. In pull-tests done by boating magazines, pretty much all anchors except Rocna, Spade and similar anchors have eventually started dragging as the pull force got too high.
Rocna did have some issues with the steel quality for a while after moving production to China; those issues are resolved by now as far as I've understood.
Yea, well - I guess this condition the Rocna can't handle:
It was in Kea/Greece. I wanted to berth (is the the correct word to mean "park the boat at the pier"?). Like everywhere in Greece you have to set the anchor and pull back until you hit the pier. The Problem with Kea is that the water gets deep really quick. A few meters from the pier it's like 15m deep.
I never had trouble to get a CQR to hold there, but not the Rocna. After like 4 tries my neighbor was thinking that I'm too stupid to do this (even with now 60m chain out) and a small discussion broke out. The end was that I let him do this with my boat and the anchor was slipping again ...
He asked what kind of anchor I have and i said "Rocna. Then he said: "Ok then it's not your fault, with this type of anchor you won't get lucky here."
So I pulled out my 2nd anchor, which was a CQR and it worked right away. I have no idea why the Rocna would not stay put ... maybe it has problems if the ground is not level?
Possibly you've found one of the (few?) niches where the Rocna won't do :-) I suppose it's relatively dependent on on gravity to set correctly (but not as much as the spade) and hence may be dragged sideways if the bottom isn't level.
In the end of the day, when it comes to anchors, it's more about religion than science.
For the causal anchoring situation, what is really relevant is ... what is the probability that the anchor won't set or will start dragging if dropping it completely on random on a place where we don't know the bottom conditions? One of the "selling point" with Rocna is that it's supposed to be an all-round-anchor, it should not be needed to know much about the bottom conditions, and one should not need to change the anchor dependent on the bottom conditions ... but here you've apparently found a place where the CQR excels compared to Rocna.
For the causal anchoring situation it's not really relevant weather the anchor will lose its grip under Beaufort 10 or Beaufort 12. Very few people would leave the boat by anchor under such conditions anyway (though, I do want to have the theoretical possibility to survive such storms by anchor, and I do tend to believe it's a good idea to let the wind hit the bow under such circumstances, rather than letting the wind come from the side while staying in a harbour)
Tests i.e. done by boating magazines won't really cut it, they drop the anchors maybe some dozen times under controlled conditions and check how much force the anchor can take. However, to really check the relevant metric it's needed to drop the anchor a thousand times, on all kind of different bottom surfaces, and make statistics based on that.
User reports are also kind of useless. All together, there is sufficient statistics in the user experiences, but they are hard to collect. Many owners will boast "I've never dragged with anchor X, hence anchor X is really good" - but it doesn't really matter if the captain is rarely using the anchor, and only using it in very calm conditions on well-known anchorages. The captain has only tried anchor X, but it's quite probable that anchor Y, Z or Q also would have done the job. What really matters are the user experiences where the user has been experiencing dragging.
Quite often one would read on forums that a captain has switched from Bruce to Rocna due to problems with dragging, and the captain has experienced that the Rocna was really superior ... but for one thing, what is untold is that while upgrading from Bruce to Rocna, the size of the anchor was also upgraded. For the other thing, the captain probably doesn't realize it himself, but he is biased - he believes the Rocna is better, and he has invested quite a lot in the Rocna. He wants the Rocna to be better than the Bruce. Under such circumstances human nature tends to overlook all observations not supporting the belief.
Despite those problems, I still believe that I've done a pretty decent job sieving through the information I could find, and I'm still convinced that the Rocna (and by extention, my Mantus) is a better all-round-anchor than the CQR. Perhaps I've become ... religious :-)
Be careful, what if the pirates come to steal the ship :)
That's always a risk, but it's quite negligible. And even if I have published the position as well as my intent to leave it there until Friday, I haven't published how to get the boat started, what kind of locking systems and alarms I have on it, how to get up the anchor, etc :-)
This is all turning into an adventure in and of itself. I guess I can't really blame the 'neighbors' for being concerned. I mean, I guess they could have realized what you were doing had they come close enough to your boat and seen the information you left in the window. In fact, they could have called you directly instead of involving the Coast Guard.
I wonder if you're going to get a call about your dinghy, too. I can see where you might be more concerned about it, considering where it was left, versus the boat.
Safe journeying to Denmark, by the way. Sounds like quite the voyage you're making. :)
I didn't leave any contact information there, so ... that won't happen. There is nothing on it that can be used for tracing up the owner.
No plates or numbers or any other identifying marks? Well, all right. You could already know what state everything is by the time you see this reply, but anyway, hopefully everything is exactly as you left them for both the boat and the dinghy and you'll be able to continue on with your voyage as intended.
I find all of this quite adventurous and amazing. I can see, though, that it's not for the feint of heart or the inexperienced. You need to know what you're doing. :)
The dhingy has nothing. I think there is some HIN on it, but in any case it's not registered on my name as I bought it second hand. And yes, both boats were found where I left them.
It's nice that they called to see what's going on with the boat. Hope you will find your dhingy "safe" also. It looked a bit weird though how you left it there...Sweeden is not that safe with thieves as Norway, from what I know.
Oh man, you got me, the suspense you created let me that there would be something bad happens to the board or anything like that, I got worried and in the end, they just call you to ask? now i can relax everything is undercontrol.
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Ocean is my favourite place. I love water.
Your story was good.But you should have to be careful. let's start journey.
Never had an incident of missing boat before. Although missing might not be the appropriate word but still :D
I once got a call from Redningsselskapet, they found my first boat drifting, luckily on a day with no wind.
nice tho here the are investigating. a think a never seen ur bout before like this ist a nice almost old school tock tock..lol exsept the sail part..:)