In 20 years owning Apropos, we’ve anchored hundreds of times. Bringing the anchor back up requires someone down below in the v-berth stacking the chain and a person on-deck operating the windlass. The two need to communicate because the windlass can operate faster than the person below can stack the chain. Sometimes I do both jobs by going back and forth–operating the windlass to bring in 20′ of chain, going down below to stack, then going back on deck and bringing in another 20′, and so on. Pulling in a muddy chain slows down the process because the person on deck working the windlass is also washing the mud off the chain links with the wash-down deck hose.

I’ve always wanted to improve the anchoring procedure, and finally came up with a solution while visiting another Hans Christian 43.

But first, let me explain why a person is needed to stack the chain down below.

Old Configuration

Apropos has 2 anchors on the bow–a primary anchor (65 lb CQR) with 300′ of 3/8″ chain, and a secondary anchor (45 lb CQR) with 300′ of 3-strand 1/2″ rope. The chain is stored in a lower locker located under the v-berth bunk. The rope is stored in an upper locker located forward of the v-berth. A 4″ diameter aluminum hawse pipe passes through the upper locker and feeds the chain to the lower locker.

To access the lower locker, the front third of the v-berth mattress is folded back to expose a removable panel. The reason a person is required to stack the chain is because the lower section of the chain locker was partitioned off to make room for a bow thruster, batteries, and associated fuses and windlass controls. With a smaller, shallower chain locker, when all 300′ of chain is in, the top of the pile is higher than the point where the chain exits the hawse pipe so a person is needed to “stack the chain” as it’s being brought in.

In regards to the upper locker where the 3-strand rope is stored, it also has it’s own problems–coiling 300′ of 3-strand rope takes up a lot of room and is messy. Taking the rope out while dropping the anchor and then re-coiling it when bringing the anchor up has to be done slowly and requires a person below. But this secondary anchor is seldom used and is mostly a back-up to the primary anchor (the exception is anchoring in gale conditions where it may be necessary to put out both anchors). We have only used this anchor twice in 20 years and it was in calm conditions and shallow water just to try it out.

New Configuration

I was aboard another Hans Christian 43 in the Puget Sound region with a different interior layout. It had a head up front where my V-berth bunk is, and a Pullman berth where my port side head is. The Pullman vs V-berth configurations were choices given to new owners during the build process. In the Pullman configuration, the chain locker is forward of the head and is accessed through a small door, exactly like the upper (secondary) locker is on Apropos. In the Pullman configuration, the lower locker that’s on Apropos is used for plumbing and the holding tank.

So it occurred to me, why not use the upper locker to store the primary anchor chain (either 300′ or part of it)? To do this, I first removed and cut the hawse pipe that runs through the locker. While I had it out, I cleaned and painted the locker and also the pipe (I plan to make a collar to be able to re-join the pipe in case I want to restore it back to original).

I also decided to store part of the chain in the lower locker to decrease the chain pile in the upper locker. After experimenting, I came up with 225′ in the upper locker and 75′ in the lower. The floor of the upper locker looks like this with the hole leading to the lower locker. Here’s a picture showing 225′ of chain stacked in the upper locker.

Since the upper locker is where the secondary anchor 3-strand rope used to be stored, I thought about how I could still have some line in the locker to be used for the secondary anchor. I came up with the idea of installing a spool with enough rope to be useful for a lunch anchor, where you just want to drop an anchor for a short stopover. This is usually done in shallow waters and calm conditions when putting the larger anchor with chain isn’t required. I mounted a black ABS pipe running fore/aft in the upper part of the locker. The pipe serves as an axle for the spool and is held on each end with endcaps that are mounted to starboard, then the starboard is mounted to bulkheads. I had to custom make wedges because the surfaces where the endcaps were mounted were not perpendicular to the pipe. The spool is big enough to hold 150′ of 1/2″ 3-strand nylon rope. The deck hole where the rope goes to the windlass is directly above the spool. I also saved the original 300′ of 3-strand and put it on a larger spool to keep on the boat for emergency use (in gale conditions or if I ever lose the main anchor).

For now, I put 60′ of 1/2″ 3-strand nylon rope on the spool, after testing it out in the spring, I’ll replace it with the maximum amount of rope that fits on the spool, about 150′.

These modifications should make anchoring a lot easier. I’m looking forward to trying it out in the spring.