C'est la Vie is a 1966 Charlie Morgan 34.

Her home port is Everglades City, FL. Our typical cruising area is Southwest Florida, the Florida Keys, the Southeastern Atlantic Seaboard, and the Bahamas. We are C'est la Vie's third owners and purchased her in 2005. We continue to maintain and update this classic vessel. Please post any questions or comments about C'est la Vie or our travels via the comment links below.


Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Here we go round the anchor rode

I drew upon my latent climbing knowledge to free up the rode.  

The most vexing part of untwisting the rodes was my inability to pull up enough rope rode to tie off the line.  Typically I would simply let out some more chain on the other rode and this slack would permit me to haul in on the rope rode.  Unfortunately the twists in the two rodes prohibited this solution.

Using an 8 foot loop of 4mm cord I tied a prussic knot to the rode, ran the cord through the bowsprit, and back to a two to one on deck.  The prussic knot will slide freely along the rode until force is applied to the cord. When force is applied the prussic knot cinches down on the larger diameter line and will not slip.

This system allowed me to secure the rope rode and  take pressure off the twists .  With this system in place the only thing remaining was the grunt work of coiling up the remaining ¾” rode; passing it through the bowsprit; and then  while standing in the dinghy pass the coil around and around the chain rode.

This entire process took about one hour and provided a necessary distraction from a day of working on the computer.

2 comments:

  1. so smart. your climbing skills at work. brings a new level to a belay escape.

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  2. I think the AMGA should adopt this maneuver as part of their single pitch instructor training. nice work!

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