bow, clutching the pulpit with one hand, and a flashlight in the other,
one foot in the scupper, one foot pushing the 'down' button, or maybe
releasing the clutch by hand, trying to remember how many wire ties, or
what color paint went by........well, you get the picture.

While we now have paint on our chain every ten feet, on a boat we used
to use the chain was not marked at all.  So how to figure out how much
chain was going out.  It turned out the distance from the wildcat to the
end of the pulpit was about six feet, give or take.  This boat had a
powered windlass both directions, so the chain was not going out all
that fast.  So it was a very easy thing to simply pick a link on the
chain at the wildcat and follow it by eye out to the end of the pulpit
and that was six feet.  Then shift back to the wildcat and follow
another link out for the next six feet and so on.  If you lost the exact
link, well, you knew more or less where it was so you still got your six
feet more or less.  Like I said before, I just don't see anchoring as a
precise science in terms of the importance of knowing to the foot how
much rode is out. If you're in doubt, let out another ten feet or so.

In some ways the notion of precisely marking chain and drawing up tables
and calculating rode lengths out to three decimal places reminds me of a
discussion that took place on a UK canalboating forum I occasionally
participate in, as we've done a lot of canalboating.  The subject was
using GPS on narrowboats.  This is a boat that's operating at 4mph in a
ditch.  You're either going up the ditch or down the ditch.  The ditch
is on average about thirty or forty feet wide, and in the middle it's
usually about five feet deep.  There are several brands of guidebooks
that map out every inch of every canal and call out every bridge, pub,
and canalside feature.  But GPS  (and bow thrusters) are becoming all
the rage in canalboating these days. Talk about technology for
technology's sake.  There are some things where on-the-dot precision not
only isn't necessary, it makes everything ten times more complicated
than it needs to be.  GPS on a canalboat is one of these things, in my
opinion.  So is a complex system of marking anchor chain and drawing up
tables and color-code charts.  Again, my opinion.

But if a boater enjoys doing all this stuff, hey, enjoying boating is
what it's all about.

C. Marin Faure
GB36-403 "La Perouse"
Bellingham, Washington

Marin's system is a simple and very easy to use way to estimating length of
chain let out. I've used that many times on boats with a foredeck big enough to
have 5' or more of chain visible on deck at once.

Another method is to measure the amount of chain let out in ten seconds, and
divide that by ten. You now know the length/per second that your windlass will
drop (many are around 1'/sec.), so then all you need to do is count the number
of seconds the chain was running out to arrive at the approximate rode length.

Kevin Redden