Measuring Anchor Rode

Trinity

Trinity

Member
Sep 20, 2008
113
Kemah Texas
Boat Info
2006 58 Sedan Bridge
2007 11 ft. Boston Whaler Dingy
Engines
Man 900 HP
Any easy way to measure the chain anchor - have you painted sections with different paint ?
Looking for advice -
 
Paint, tape, there are kits that have little tell tales you attach. For chain I would do a section of different color spray paint every 10ft. On my boat, rope rode, I just used tape, 1 band 10ft, 2 20, 3 30 and so on. I think I went to 50ft, I rarely anchor in more than 15 or 20ft.
 
I stretched most of my chain out on the dock, laid out in zig-zagged 25' sections. I painted a short section (1' red, 1' white) every 25' and at the 50' and 100' points I added an extra 1' section of white.

One additional thing I did was to go about 8' up from where the chain attaches to my anchor and painted about a 6' white section.

That lets me know when I see that long white section come up through the pulpit I know I'm getting close to the end of the chain. I slow down on the retrieval so the anchor doesn't slam into the pulpit. And no, I ain't gonna tell y'all what kind of anchor I have. :p
 
I use these. Simple and effective. Lasts a long time.
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I have all chain... stretched it out on the dock and painted a ~10 section every 25'... white, blue, green, yellow and finally red. So when I see the red, i know I have about 150' out. Its lasted about 5 seasons now... will have to redo it in the next couple years.
 
After stretching it out at my dock, I painted about a 2 foot section of my all chain rode every 30 feet with red, yellow, blue, red, yellow, blue.
Bought the 3 colors in Rustoleum rattle cans at Home Depot and have enough left in those 3 cans to refresh the markings for Several more years.
 
In SW Florida there are mostly muddy bottoms for anchoring. In addition to painting the chain rode every 20 feet, I used a different color at a point that came visible on the roller that left the anchor a couple of feet below the surface. After backing down a bit the anchor would come up clean.
 
Not mentioned above, but in the interest of completeness, there is a high tech solution as well. I installed one of these because, well, I could. Not cheap, but so nice to know exactly how much rode is deployed without straining to see the chain over the windshield.
 
We went for the Lofran Galaxy 503. Other than the small display and my old eyes it is great to know exactly how much chain we have out.
upload_2019-10-20_23-7-22.jpeg
 
bobeast said:
Not mentioned above, but in the interest of completeness, there is a high tech solution as well. I installed one of these because, well, I could. Not cheap, but so nice to know exactly how much rode is deployed without straining to see the chain over the windshield.
Click to expand...

Curious what this takes to install.

Thanks in advance!
 
Last edited:
Chris-380 said:
Curious what this takes to install.

Thanks in advance!
Click to expand...

Not too bad. I had to drill a depression in the side of the gypsy into which I epoxied a magnet. A two wire sensor is then mounted such that the magnet crosses it on each revolution. One of those sensor wires goes to ground at the motor, and the other wire is run up to the helm where it connects to the magic box. The box gets, power + ground + sensor wire, and that's about it.

I had previously changed out my flood/spot bulb to an LED flood only. This left me with a spare wire, so I stole that to carry the sensor signal up to the helm. That way I didn't have to run a new wire.

Calibration is a matter of paying out a fixed length of rode, and counting the revolutions to pull it back in.
 
Last edited:
bobeast said:
Not too bad. I had to drill a depression in the side of the gypsy into which I epoxied a magnet. A two wire sensor is then mounted such that the magnet crosses it on each revolution. One of those sensor wires goes to ground at the motor, and the other wire is run up to the helm where it connects to the magic box. The box gets, power + ground + sensor wire, and that's about it.

I had previously changed out my flood/spot bulb to an LED flood only. This left me with a spare wire, so I stole that to carry the sensor signal up to the helm. That way I didn't have to run a new wire.

Calibration is a matter of paying out a fixed length of rode, and counting the revolutions to pull it back in.
Click to expand...


Sound s like a great install, thank you!
 
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