Sarah Pedersen March 3rd 2023
Additional Viking immersion suits for the crew that I hope they never need except for our abandon ship practice and because I have no desire to go diving in Arctic waters we now have a beautifully engineered Ultra Anchor Ring emergency recovery device from Ultra Marine. This is also great to work out with which makes it useful in the everyday life on the boat 🙂
Hopefully this will get us out of trouble if we get the anchor stuck somewhere remote, using it is pretty straightforward, attach a suitable sized line, clip it over the chain, slide it down until its over the shank of the anchor and then haul it up again, its like a tripping line that you add if needed rather than having to rig one as you deploy the anchor…
The Ultra Anchor Ring doubles up as Kellet for adding weight to the chain and together with a snubber it can help absorbing shocks in a rough anchorage. In theory this should also reduce the chances of the anchor being snatched out of its holding and dragging. I do like things that have more than one purpose!
Having multiple solutions for anchoring and mooring is critical for remote cruising, I had a forestay wire lying around that came with a Furlex that was too short for the boat and now thanks to Ian at Argyll Yacht Rigger this has been transformed into a pair of 6 Meter 8mm diameter stainless wire mooring strops for attaching long shore lines to rocks and other large objects ashore.
One of those important annual checks is to inspect the 100M anchor chain for any damage or wear and at the same time give the chain and chain locker a good wash to remove as much salt as possible.
It was also time to replace the chain markers and to recalibrate the chain counter on my Autoanchor Remote, it may look nice and sunny in this picture but it was freezing!!
Im really looking forward to using the new Ultra Anchor this year, its certainly going to get a good test in the remote locations we will be exploring and dropping anchor.