ail-say oat-bay
Member II
1977 Ericson 27.
Having just returned from our first multi-day test trip of overnight camping at anchor: I need to come up with a system to expediently retrieve and store the anchor chain and rode.
I don’t know if any of the 27’s have a foredeck anchor locker, I doubt it. Mine certainly doesn’t. There is a small chain locker interior, accessible on deck through a small hawse pipe, but it is open to the V-berth through a hole in the forward wooden bulkhead.
Knowing that if I just started cramming rode and chain down through the hawse pipe it would likely spill out into the V-berth (or at least the smell would) I did not know what to do with all this wet, muddy, baywater-gunked chain and rode. I possibly could have gotten my wife to lay up in the V berth and try to reach in and hand-coil it into place as I fed, but with sleeping bags, pillows, luggage, and other bags of gear necessary for overnighting packed up there that would have been difficult. Besides, I didn’t want to introduce that stuff into the interior when it was all still wet, muddy, and probably stinky!
I couldn’t think of anything else to do, so I just piled it all on the foredeck, to deal with it later. This of course would not do if wanting to sail home, we motored. Once back I dropped the anchor, chain, and rode onto the dock and washed it all off with fresh water. It is sitting there now drying in rare NW sunshine. Once it is dry I will figure out how to get it neatly down the hawse pipe.
Have any E27 owners come up with a system for this?
Thanks,
tom