Rocna anchors on a tiny boat. Rope storage etc
Winter this year is holding its grep on us unusually long.
While waiting for ice to melt I was using warmer days to outfit Louve for the coming season - her first.
One of the things to be organized is anchor storage. I have a good experience with using Rocna anchors so Louve will be equipped with two such irons: heavy 10kg main anchor at the bow and handy 4kg at hand, close to me. Useful as they are - they are quite challenging to store on a small boat.
I designed a holding plate which hopefully solves the issue of keeping the anchor tight in place while having it ready to deploy.
Small anchor found its place under the aft thwart.
I wanted to keep the weight as low as possible but could not place the anchor closer to the centerline as that will obstruct opening two main compartments under the sole. A compromise but looks to be quite good. It will not disturb me while I sit on the sole, Roger Barns style.
My overkill, hurricane, main anchor is stored at the very bow. I want to trim the boat and compensate for the weight of me and camping gear which will be stored mostly in the aft compartment.
It was a tight fit as I needed to leave place for opening the fo’c’sle hatch (which will store anchor rode) and the mast.
Checked that the anchor does not obstruct the mast.
As these fixtures will see lots of wear I did not epoxy-coated them. Instead they got Owatrol D1 & D2 treatment. Easy to re-apply when it starts to wear down.
Anchor rode will need to live in the same space with oars. That can lead to problems with tangled rope so I am planning to build a simple divider here. It will leave enough room to store oars and will keep the rope and chain away from them.
I like to have abundance of ropes on my boats. It’s never too much! At first I planned to store them in bow section, like Roger on Avel Dro but realized that I really don’t have enough space there.
I have, in total, 250m of them, divided into 30 and 50m bites. They weight a bit so I thought that it would be wise to keep this weight as low as possible on my small Louve.
Well, bilge on Ilur is deep and on my boat it was not accessible. Wasted space where all my ropes fit quite nicely.
With bleeding heart I decided to cut this beautiful northern pine deck to make hatches. Not only will it provide storage space but will also give me access to the bilge, for cleaning and easier maintenance.
Once cut all exposed, fresh edges got Owatrol D1 saturation.
What is left is making some toggles which will keep them safely shut when at sea. I managed to find watertight plastic boxes which fit snugly into these openings. Will use them for food storage.
Anchor rode locker for the aft anchor is on starboard main compartment. I use 10m chain with 50m rope. That should give me some flexibility in the Archipelago.
As a side job I started building a simple galley box, to store Origo spirit kitchen. Not necessary for launching day but it will be nice to make some fresh coffee afterwards.
To do before launch:
fixing rudder’s lower gudgeon (oversize drill & epoxy fill, thru bolts instead of screws)
helm impeder
In coming future:
outboard engine mount
boom tent