Olson 911 anchor locker usability question

[K2MSmith]

Hello All,

I'm interested in the Olson 911...

Instead of an anchor locker door on the deck near the bow, the Olson 911 has a hole on the deck for the anchor chain that leads the chain/rope into the anchor compartment. The hole is nicely finished off with a metal fairing. The actual anchor locker is below the deck in a compartment that is accessible forward of the v-birth inside. It seems that when you pull up the anchor, you would have to feed the chain into the hole on deck as you pull up the anchor. It actually looks very clean because there is no anchor door, but I am wondering about how well this works in practice ? I believe all the boats I have sailed have an anchor door or windless,.

Has anyone used this type of anchor storage ? Does it work OK in practice or is it source of problems (tangles etc. ) ?

 

[Loren Beach]

I ran your inquiry by a friend who has a (Pacific Boats) O-911s. Same deck and hull tooling. Differences are in the nicer interior teak for the Ericson models, AFAIK.

His reply: "He must be looking at a 911SE. I am not familiar with them but do know the 911S doesn't have an anchor locker at all. My anchor is in the lazarette with the line coiled at the bottom of a bucket covered with a length of coiled chain that you have to run with the attached anchor from the lazarette to the bow and deploy."

Given that many smaller racer/cruisers designed in the 70's and well into the 80's did not have an anchor well forward, this is not too surprising. Apropos of whatever, our prior boat, a Hinterhoeller-designed Niagara 26, did not have a well forward. For ten years I would carry my Danforth 8s with it's mesh bag of line and chain forward from the cockpit for our overnighting on the hook. Not really convenient, but with a "lightweight" anchor set-up, quite do-able.
IF our heavier O-34 did not have a well, I would store the anchor on the bow or pulpit and only schlep the bag of chain & line forward. I notice that by the 80's, a lot of builders were designing anchor wells into boats down to 30' and even shorter. Buyers liked the idea. I have actually seen this on a Bruce King-designed E-25+, altho that particular "well" was not very big!

Speculating.... one could do a retrofit, but it would require some tedious glasswork, and some mold-making. I have done smaller projects like that, but nothing on that scale.
Different question, but when we were shopping, in 1994, we looked at both the Olson 911 and the O-34. The determining factors, at that time, were the aft head in the 34, and the general roominess for a tall guy inside. I actually liked the deck layout just as much. Both are designs that were decades "ahead of the times" in speed, function, and style. And.... at the same time we did have earnest money on an E-32-200, but could not quite reach agreement with the seller. It would have been a good choice, also.
I recall dimly knowing that EY built 'high-end' boats, but it has taken a couple decades to repeatedly confirm just how much better our boat is than the mass of cheaper-built boats that my friends own and swear at. We sail rings around 'em, too.

 

[K2MSmith]

Thanks Loren for your reply. It is a 911SE and it has an anchor well in the bow but you have to thread the tackle /rode through the hole in the top deck. It may, in fact be quite easy, I was just asking to see if there was anyone who did any anchoring with one. I intend to do -som-e cruising with the boat (like the channel islands), so I do need a solid anchor. My days might be gone pulling up anchors (due to a back injury sustained while bicycle racing). So, I have to decide if this is a non-starter or not. Pulling anchors up on the foredeck doesn't put your back in the safest position to avoid an re-injury. I did check the Lewmar site and they do make some nice flush deck windlass models. It would depend on how big the actual anchor locker is to determine if the below-deck components would fit with the chain/rode. That being said, most 30' boats are not going to have a windlass I notice (unless you want a pure cruising bluewater boat), so I am going to have this problem with any boat.

 

[Loren Beach]

Strictly in the FWIW dept, I have several friends with "older" sailboats that use a snatch block or two to route the rope portion of the rode back to a primary cockpit winch. That still leaves about 30' of chain to haul in back up at the pointy end.
I have not had to do that yet, but it remains a possibility if the anchor gets hooked on something.
Depending on whether you have crew this might work well.

When we anchor I do the "bow work" and let Kathy drive. I use standard hand signals to advise her to go forward, reverse, port, starboard, or into neutral. For retrieval, I have found it easiest to sit down on the foredeck and haul in in the rode while she moves the boat forward and over the anchor. I carry some gauntleted rubber gloves aboard to deal with mud on the tackle. Bucket and line, also.

Worth it, tho, when sitting in the cockpit enjoying happy hour in the evening, marveling at the sparkling water with the sun across it.
We sometimes have bald eagles overhead along the lower Columbia River back channels.

Not a 911, but our O-34 anchor well pictured in this thread: https://ericsonyachts.org/ie/threads/re-galvanizing-anchors.3951/

 

[toddster]

The E29 has a somewhat similar anchor-unfriendly arrangement. In the beginning, I ran the rope rode back along the sidedeck and winched it in with a primary. The main forces to overcome were the wind bearing on the boat (quiet calm anchorage - NOT). But that didn't lead fair, and left a real muddy mess all along the deck. Then I installed a small windlass on deck that feeds down into the bow locker. I also replaced the small vent opening that was there with a deck plate, so I can reach in and adjust the fall of the rode, or access a second rode. (The main purpose of this was to access the bow hardware that was originally installed before the deck was joined to the hull.) For my combination of windlass, gypsy, and rode, the chain feeds OK but the rope seems to need tailing, or it periodically jams. Maybe the locker isn't deep enough.

Later, I acquired 150 feet of chain. But I am hesitant to put all that weight up in the bow, unless I really am going to need it. I've learned that many cruising boats mount the windlass all the way at the aft end of the V-berth, and drop the chain down a pipe mounted on the bulkhead, into a locker below the waterline and more mid-ship. The feasibility of this approach probably depends on the arrangement of the house and foredeck on any particular boat.

 

[K2MSmith]

Not a 911, but our O-34 anchor well pictured in this thread: https://ericsonyachts.org/ie/threads/re-galvanizing-anchors.3951/

Nice new anchor setup. Your descriptions says "galvanized" so I take it to be a steel anchor ?

 

[Loren Beach]

Nice new anchor setup. Your descriptions says "galvanized" so I take it to be a steel anchor ?

Yes, authentic Danforth steel. It has been many years since the metal looked at pretty as it did in those pictures, tho!

 

[Slick470]

Neither the Ericson or Pacific Boats Olson 911S or SE have an anchor locker as standard. Most don't have the chain hole forward either. That was probably an owner mod for the boat in question at some point.

As far as anchoring, I've only ever anchored the boat for a few hours at a time, but tend to keep the anchor and chain in the sail locker aft and haul it up to the bow when needed. It isn't very convenient, but it keeps the weight out of the bow. I've kicked around setting up a stern anchor arrangement to see if that is better, as the boat seems a bit squirrely when anchored by the bow and I've found that when sleeping at the dock in the v-berth the stern slaps in the waves a bit.

There is a forward bulkhead that would keep the chain and rode out of the v-berth, but I'm drawing a blank if there is anything below that would constrain the chain and rode once it is below the v-berth platform. I haven't crawled in there in a while but I remember it being pretty wide open and not an area you would want the chain and rode sliding around. Plus if you live in an area with a muddy bottom, that just brings that bottom smell into the boat.

I've seen a few pictures of more cruising set up Olson 911s that have added a bow roller and chain hole forward. I assume it works ok.