On Mon, Jun 22, 2009 at 07:20:16PM -0400, Lee Haefele wrote: > Once the pitch of the chain changes by more than 1-2mm, the windlass gypsy > will no longer pull it very well. BTDT.
True enough; BTDT myself (money for luxuries like chain replacement often being in short supply while being a broke sailor in the Caribbean, and hauling by hand can put it off for a while. :) However, rusty chain is not necessarily an indicator of excessive stretch - although you could, theoretically, lose enough metal due to rusting to make the difference. In any case, chain, stretched or not, is not a bad thing to have on board as spares: if you have to weather a hurricane, what seemed like ridiculous amounts of chain and rope, as well as stupidly-large anchors can suddenly become your best friends - and be just barely enough for the job. I once knew a Cuban-American steelworker who built himself a 34' boat and sailed down to the islands; he had also built himself a 150-lb and a 250-lb anchor, and used them as part of his ballast. Just before hurricane Luis, he used his mainsheet to winch these two hooks out of his bilge and laid them out, on 1/2" and 3/4" chain respectively. When a 65' boat dragged into him during the hurricane (we were both watching our boats from the beach), he looked at it for a minute and said, with utter confidence: "it'll hold." As far as I'm concerned, that works better than any kind of insurance you can buy. :) -- * Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * http://LinuxGazette.NET * _______________________________________________ Liveaboard mailing list [email protected] To adjust your membership settings over the web http://www.liveaboardnow.org/mailman/listinfo/liveaboard To subscribe send an email to [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] The archives are at http://www.liveaboardnow.org/pipermail/liveaboard/ To search the archives http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] The Mailman Users Guide can be found here http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/mailman-member/index.html
