On Yachts and Yacht Handling

by Thomas Fleming Day

The fourth anchor—the kedge—is a most useful piece of furniture. Being light and easy to handle it can be kept on the bows when racing or cruising. If it falls calm it is there to let go and hold you; if you go ashore it can be at once run out with a line to haul off, and if you miss a mooring it will enable you to hang on until a line can be carried to the buoy. It is useful when coming-to at a dock or when finding a berth in a basin or slip; light enough to be thrown over anywhere you can anchor by the stern or head with equal facility. Having it allows you in racing on tender trimming craft to keep the stand-by anchor below out of the way and where it will interfere least with the trim of the boat. Heavy weights hung on a boat's nose do not improve either its speed or its bad weather qualities. To a cruising man a kedge is invaluable; I would as soon be without my compass as my little hook. In boats under 35 feet the kedge takes the place of the smaller bower and performs its duties.

To give good service a kedge must be a properly designed kedge, not simply a small anchor. The proper kedge is what is known as spider-built—long arms, long shank, long stock and narrow, sharp flukes. It is difficult to get these ready-made, but the shipsmith will make you one. The best substitute for a genuine kedge is the seine anchor.

Now what is the best to use with these anchors—chain or rope? With an anchor like the stand-by, chain is best for all boats that have a place to stow it. Chain is more lasting, less dirty, and takes but little room in comparison with the same length of rope. Hawsers are always in the way, no matter how neatly they are coiled down. Besides they are expensive, owing to their short lives. In bad weather you cannot well keep them on deck, and they are wet and disagreeable cabinmates.

For the kedge a long light line should be used, something that one man can readily handle. It is best to have it in two parts; one part being kept stowed away and the other always bent. Then you have less of a coil on deck or in the bow locker, but have, by bending on the second piece, a length that will enable you to kedge off or on to advantage.

For the spare I prefer, and so will any man who has experience, a hawser. In heavy weather a boat will ride much easier to hemp than she will to chain; no matter how much of the latter you may pay out, she has the weight to lift every time she takes up the slack, and consequently rises slower and falls quicker. Hemp, until it gets well soaked, puts little of its weight on a riding vessel, and besides the give of the slack it stretches in itself.

But whichever you use, be sure and have plenty of it. Remember this: that the first and all-important thing in anchoring is SCOPE.

One night, not long ago, we wanted to anchor a yawl, as it was calm and the tide setting us away from our port. My companions let the anchor go without first sounding; it ran to the bitter end of the chain with no bottom. As the chart only gave 15 fathoms I was rather surprised and supposed I had miscalculated the yacht's position, but, as my bearings seemed to be correct, I overhauled the chain. How much chain do you think was on that anchor? The boat being an old-fashioned plumb-stemmer, 32 feet on top. Just 10 fathoms. Gaze on that—10 fathoms of chain to anchor a boat of that size. Why, to make it hold in a breeze of wind you would have to be in eight feet of water.

The former owner, who was responsible for this, was a man who never went ten miles from his home port, and I should judge knew very little about vessel handling. There are hundreds of other boats in just the same fix. And still we wonder why yachts blow ashore.

Now, as we are through with the anchors, let us bear-off for a bit and tackle the subject of anchoring, which is the art of using them. Let me here remark that in all my experience I never had anchors fail to do their duty, when properly used and attended to, and that every scrape in this line that ever I got my boat into, was due to my own carelessness or laziness or somebody else's. I have had hawsers part and chains break, and I have broken arms of anchors and have lost them altogether, but in every case the accident was avoidable if proper forethought and precaution had been used.