Favorite Mods: Hauling Line

Your most satisfying or successful mods

We asked about your favorite mods and our friend Christine Berven wrote with a list of several. Below is a description of her “Hauling Line” which allows her adjust the location of the fairlead for her anchor rode, simplifying anchor deployment.—Eds

I use what I call for the lack of a better word a "hauling line" which allows me to move (fore and aft) a carabiner through which my anchor line passes. In the picture of my boat, the hauling line is red and the carabiner is yellow. The hauling line is made of Dyneema© with loop splices on each end. The hauling line runs through low-friction rings (black in the picture) incorporated into figure-eight loops of more Dyneema© (orange in the picture). These loops are attached to my starboard bow mooring cleat and my starboard stern cleat using a cow hitch.

The loops at the ends of the hauling line were made using a Brummel Eye Splice. For the low-friction rings figure-eight loops, the low friction ring has an extra loop around the whole ring before it comes back to form the figure-eight to ensure it stays secure in the loop. The ends are buried to be smooth.

The continuous part of the hauling line is run on the inside of my starboard shroud (light blue in the picture) and the ends are connected outside of the shroud at the loop end of a stainless-steel snap-shackle with cow hitches. The carabiner, which is a double-opening type (two gates with one that opens outward and one inward) is attached to the snap-shackle.

To deploy the anchor, the carabiner is brought aft, and the anchor rode is clipped into the carabiner. Then the carabiner is run forward, and the hauling line secured in the starboard jib-sheet cam cleat at the fore end of my coaming. With the carabiner forward at the bow, I come up to where I want to anchor and let the anchor down as I drift backwards. With the carabiner forward, the boat remains pointed into the wind. I then let out the amount of line I want and then cleat off the anchor rode using my jib-sheet horn cleat in the middle of my starboard coaming. With the rode secured, I can then set the anchor with my motor in reverse.

With the anchor set and the rode secure, I can now at my leisure go forward to secure the anchor rode to the bow cleat.

When I want to leave, I pull up on the anchor rode with the carabiner forward. This keeps me head-to-wind. When the shackle between the line and chain of my rode meets the carabiner, I will likely be free from the bottom (if deep enough) so I can motor or sail away immediately. If not, I can then release the hauling line and the carabiner comes aft with the rest of the rode. With the remaining part of the rode so short, I can quickly pull up what I need to move off under control. I then ship the rest of the rode and anchor. •SCA•