We have it easy in Puget Sound, most of our anchorages are protected, relatively shallow and provide good holding. In a way, we’re spoiled. But getting ready for a wider range of cruising has meant upgrading our ground tackle. So far we’ve upgradde our anchor to the mighty Ultra, and we regalvanized the 225 of chain to keep it protected.

We’ve had many nights of sound sleep with the strong anchoring system, but a looming issue has been deeper anchorages.

Even in Puget Sound we sometimes find ourselves in 40 feet anchorages. Further afield, we might find places that we would really like to anchor in the 65 foot range. Adding 3 feet from the water to our bow and then letting out sufficient scope (4:1, 5:1 or even 7:1 in some crazy situations), we definitely don’t have enough rode at “just” 225 feet of chain.

Here’s an example, in 60 feet of water, plus 3 feet gives us 63 ft. Now multiply that by 5, we would need 315 feet of rode to sleep well at night. So how do we add to it, adding more chain is not palatable (weight, space, a weak link to connect the two), so we chose New England ropes 8 Plait, which we found at a nice price at Fisheries Supply, and last weekend got to work on the 8 Plait to chain splice. It took us about 5 hours.

The splice begins by separating the 8 plait into its component strands, specifically, four bundles of two strands, flattened, combed and taped together to provide a smooth splice. Two of the strands are run into the chain link from behind and two from the front.

The idea is to get a lean, clean transfer from chain to line. The initial tucks are the trickiest, ensure there are no twists and that the splice is straight.

Now the hard work really starts, and where the hours of work come in. Each strand gets laid on top of an existing strand, flowing like water over and then tucked under. This is repeated for each of the four ends, and for our size of line, we did four of these tucks. It gets really tough as you go, and this is with brand new, unused line.

The results are super pleasing. You tuck and turn, tuck and turn, and just keep going. We split the labor so that I was doing the tucking and Rachel was doing the straightening. in this way we reduced the effort on each of us. I didn’t have the smallest fid I would have liked, which made things are bit more difficult, slower, but manageable.

After the four tucks, we taper the line and did two more tucks and then finished the splice by cutting and burning the ends, soaking the whole thing in water for two hours to set the splice and condition the line, and then reloading the whole thing into the anchor locker.

Now we have the 225 feet of chain + 150 feet of line, almost 375 total, giving us some really amazing potential range of anchorages. A splice that we did ourselves, slowly and methodically, one that we trust, with high quality line from a trusted manufacturer, gives us the ability to… wait for it…. continue to sleep well at night.