Need help with anchoring setup

I'm afraid that whoever sold you the dyneema bridle was a little off course.

There is a fairly recent article about anchoring bridles on Practical Sailor. I'm pretty sure its publicly accessible. If not PM me and I'll see if I have a copy somewhere. I recommend you start there.

Having a dyneema bridle is not helpful. The purpose of the bridle is both to keep you from yawing, which decreases anchor holding power, but also to provide shock absorption. The shock absorption is what decreases the load on the anchor. The reduction in felt load is dramatic.

You want an all nylon bridle. Climbing rope is especially good, but as it only comes in smaller diameters, your boat size may require something bigger than 12mm. It's also impossible to splice, but as its tested with knots, you're not losing anything. There are 'gym' ropes made for commercial use and repetitive falls that have a heavier sheath. They hold up especially well. Nylon double braid or eight braid are also okay. Three strand nylon works too, I just don't like it

The diameter of the soft shackle line is important but you can absolutely trust them. They are very strong and secure. Check out 'how not too' on YT for any number of testing videos. I use a 4mm dyneema soft shackle to attach my bridle to my anchor chain on a 38 foot cat. Tubular climbing webbing or a dyneema loop attached with a prussik to the chain are also good solutions.

Dyneema is very easy to splice. You can find some use for the bridle, or perhaps make a bunch of beefy soft shackles. You can avoid the button knots complexity by making toggles from aluminum rod. The toggle soft shackles are also quicker and easier to use.

 

@fallguy if you ,make up two short ropes with eye splices (no thimbles on these) at both ends, long enough to clear netting etc comfortably you can poke it through the bridle thimble and then back though its eye splice, then put the other end on your bow cleat, going through the fairlead in the middle of the cleat first, then over it. This will prevent it being flicked off by a surge.

On rope choice, I prefer polyester over nylon generally because it is tougher rope, doesn't have strands pulled like nylon, and vastly friendlier to splice and handle. Then there is twisted versus braided, with various construction options in both types.

All types of ope suited to particular tasks, and a minefield for newcomers. For your job here I recommend polyester three strand for simplicity of splicing. Braided is easier on the hands but because these will be short I feel the splicing ease will be more important. I cannot see you'd need more than 1/2" (12mm) as there are two and the rode will be secured also, you cannot not do that. Far better to be anchored beam on than drifting at 02:00.

However rather than my guesses, if you keep clear of AI, you should be able to find specifications online for rope size, eye splice creation, and an idea of the length of the eye so it works properly (this one would be better with a long splice if 3 strand is used).

 

I'd trust a tied dyneema knot far far less than a soft shackle. An eye splice each end of a line large enough to go through the thimble on one end and through the base and over the horns on the cleat on the other would be better than my first suggestion.

 

What is your primary rode?
And your anticipated anchoring deapth?

 

I anchor very little. But would like to be setup for it in a protected harbor.

Not to complicate things, but I’d like to use a sea anchor as well. That way, I could run 50 miles out into the gulf and maybe sleep 4 hours with radar alarms or a friend on watch. Let’s keep this thread clean of that bit for now.

So, if I had eye splices on each end of my connecting line; I’d be good.

As for anchoring depth, figuring it’d be good to shoot for 20-30FOW. My rode is like 225’ long with 20-25’ of chain on the front. Then I can hook the bridle to the anchor rode (somehow). I also want to float a buoy at the bridle base.

Look, I’m gonna use the dyneema bridle. I just need something that will work. So I have the eye splices both ends of the bridle part down.

Maybe @bajansailor idea, but I don’t quite understand the rode to bridle connection.

thanks for patience

 

Re the link I posted previously to the animated video showing how to tie a rolling hitch, does this make sense?
A rolling hitch is one of the best ways of attaching a smaller diameter rope to a larger diameter rope.
Note that it will only 'hold' in one direction - the hitch will slide along the big rope if it is pulled in the opposite direction.
You could tie a short length of nylon or polyester rope to the eye in the end of the bridle with a bowline initially to test it out (rather than using a splice to attach the rope to the eye) and then attach the other end of the short length to the anchor rode with a rolling hitch.
Maybe try experimenting with a couple of bits of rope at home first?

 

We use the beans out of eye to eye close splices, on the heavy use ends they get a buried brummel splice with Marlow dyneema chaffe. Getting to the point were using less and less thimble.

When we did seasonal mooring we switched to dyneema bridles, it cut the eel grass better in heavy tide areas. Spliced an eye with chaffe guard for the port side and port the other end with a whipped end for starboard cleat. Had it pop once so spliced a tag line to the eye that we would tie off over the eye on the port cleat. Dyneema chaffes pretty bad so we sometimes double up the sleeve as it exits the hawse or breaks over the rail. We've used everything from spiral cut rubber tube to doubled up hollow braid, all depends on what your going over on how it holds up.

These days there are single braid 12 strand nylon, polyester, and hmpe ropes. Go with whatever fiber gives you warm fuzzies, do a locking splice and whip it and call it a day.

 

I would put an eye splice on one end of each nylon rope.
Then attach to dyneema eye with a larks head. And a standard docking hitch on the deck cleat

The length of you nylon primary rode will sufficiently absorb shock loads. A shock absorber between the bridle and vessel would need to be as long as the rode between the anchor and bridle.

 

I know you won’t take this wrong based on our prior interactions, but it felt like you were speaking sailor to me.

 

If holding a particular position is necessary, wouldn't it require 2 anchors? Otherwise won't the boat swing around with the various forces, like wind, waves, and currents when using a single anchor? Unless a some amount of swing or orbit is acceptable?

 

Well, if forced to not swing, I have two 20 pound Navy anchors I can tie near the stern. Those are easy.

 

Ill try and dig up some pics, my words probably dont do good enough for a word picture.

Im away from my piles o rope but probably have some form or another that I can splice and illustrate. We used to do a lot of mooring before the harbor was finished, and my job is working with and splicing and farting around with different rope types.

Ill try and dig through the scrap bin and find some materials that would illustrate.

Edit to add a few thoughts before I go digging.

Most nylon when it starts getting wet and going through heat cycles isnt going to give you as much shock as you'd think on a 6' segment. On an overhead load you would notice the stretch, not sure on that short a segment its going to be profound.

 

I always anchored my cat from one hull. It sailed around much less that way.

 

Had a chance to re visit the thread.

Couple thoughts.

Not sure a small section of nylon will be a meaningful amount of shock absorption in the totality of the anchor system.

Looking at the routing some level of chaffe going to occur during prolonged mooring. The pic you posted has the line over your cross member and appears to also engage the trampoline lashing. Swingimg on anchor, something is going to chaffe. Id probably err on larger diameter rope to minize that, would also go for a length that gets the thimble eye over the side.

When we use a y bride one side of the y has an eye spliced to fit over a cleat the other section of the y is usually just a whipped tail that was tied off to the cleat. Main reason was the heavy tide would cause a yaw and a slacked off non equal y would solve or at least slow that.

I like 12 strand products for this type of stuff as they take a brummel splice. You tube can explain the splice much better than me, and while it cuts break strength down. If you already upsize for radius to reduce chafe my guess is the strength loss is irrelevant. Brummel just decreases a splice from pulling out from the loading and unloading of a boat in wave action. Had one 3 strand splice that had been tensioned pull out partially on a long mooring stay, have swapped to the locking splices since then for the mooring bridle.

The chaffe guard referenced was this

Departments - DC CHAFE GUARDS https://www.englundmarine.com/products/dc-chafe-guards%7CSAM-DC-GUARD.html

This bigger diameter but Marlow makes smaller diameter dyneema guards. Once again YouTube has tutorials so good, my crewman prefer learning from that instead of me trying to teach it.

I wouldn't hesitate to splice bigger diameter nylon directly to the eye on your existing bridle. It may chaffe by my guess is slower than the rope that has to break over the side of your cross bar.

 

Have you considered using a prusik knot and a section of Dyneema to make a snubber pendent that attaches your bridal to the anchor line?

https://www.mantusmarine.com/snubbe...wcB&gbraid=0AAAAADx7oP_3q2TRN9tMrzg1nnCsyn_aI

MIA