Should We Rig Tripping Lines? How to Protect Your Anchor
Learning the lesson the hard way is the risk you take for not going ‘by the book’ when it comes to rigging a tripping line, Tom Cunliffe warns us.
I don’t know about you, but when the chart tells me I ought to consider rigging a tripping line to protect my anchor I always think at least twice. Unless the evidence for taking this step is overwhelming, with direct promises from the cartographer of ‘foul ground’ or some such horror, the line-up of downsides can be hard to ignore. Even as I rootle around in the rope locker in search of a suitable length of the right stuff to attach to my old fender, I’m already finding excuses not to bother. Some of these are straightforward, others are downright unlikely, and a few have been consigned to the gloomy darkness of oblivion. One of the liveliest examples of these dates from the sunny morning I watched a yacht dragging her anchor out to sea at a lively pace while the owner’s wife was pegging out the washing. My crew and I called out to warn her, but the thunder of her whipping bathing towels punctuated by the lighter crackle from her charming smalls drowned us out. No dinghy swung from the stern, so it was a safe bet that her other half was about his business ashore somewhere. We couldn’t stand aside and watch her being swept away, so my mate and I hopped into our own punt and buzzed off after her. She’d got as far as the end of the harbour wall and was starting to look around her as if, perhaps, all was not as it should have been, when we caught her up. Retrieving her anchor, we found a line wound many times around the cable. We were still unravelling it when the skipper arrived alongside. When we’d sorted it all out and re-anchored, he offered us a seamanlike shot from his rum bottle and explained what must have happened.
How Tripping Lines Go Wrong
He’d read the chart conscientiously, noted that the bottom was foul in places and had rigged a tripping line so he could up-end his hook if it were to grapple something more immovable than the clean sand promised by the pilot book. Still smarting from a recent mishap in which a late-night arrival had picked up the pensioned-off fender he’d been using to buoy his tripping line, this inventive mariner had led it straight back on board up the anchor chain. He’d sensibly slacked away a couple of fathoms before settling in for a secure two-week stay. Sadly, he had failed to notice his yacht steadily winding the line around the main cable as she pirouetted in the nightly land-breeze. The slack he’d thoughtfully laid out had caught a turn on itself and shortened the line so effectively that a critical length was soon reached. The pick self-tripped in a fresh gust and away went the yacht, wife, washing and all.
The dilemma of whether or not to rig tripping lines to guard against fouling the anchor on bottom debris was aired at a Yachtmaster Instructor conference a few years ago as I settled down to a pint with a couple of colleagues. In spite of ‘what it said in the book’, they too had felt an increasing reluctance to suffer what, on the face of things, is only a minor inconvenience. On cross-examination they confessed that, like me, they had an in built preference for taking their chances on a fouled anchor. All we instructors have a duty of care to steer our students as far from trouble as we can, but some of the inconveniences they went on to describe were a long way from minor.
One told of a filthy night when an unforecast onshore gale had obliged him to clear out to sea at low water, only to wrap his propeller up with the tripping line he had rigged so prudently the previous evening and then forgotten about. He remembered it soon enough when the engine stopped as he motored over the anchor buoy, streaming downwind on yards of slack. Another of the instructors had been embarrassed when a trawler skipper, bringing home his catch late at night and passing close to the yacht anchorage, not unreasonably imagined his passage to the wharf would be clear between the anchor lights. My pal awoke when his yacht’s tripping line was caught by the trawler’s mighty propeller shaft. After being jerked from his bunk by the initial lurch, he galloped up on deck to find himself being towed toward the fish dock on a rapidly shortening hawser. Such technicolor events suggested strongly that the cure may often be worse than the sickness.
Put the other way up, the question took on further significance. How long was it, I asked, since any of us had actually fouled our anchors beyond on-board retrieval? Apart from the cock-ups that typically result from maniacs dragging across midnight cables and picking them up on the way, or the sort of shambles that can result from too many Mediterranean moors in crowded ports, the only one of us to have recently reaped the rude rewards of failing to take tripping lines seriously was me.
I once dropped my anchor innocently into what turned out to be the remains of a Citroen 2CV some optimist had driven into the upper reaches of the river at l’Aberwrac’h. I had actually considered rigging a line to the crown of my anchor because of a concern about old moorings left lying around on the bottom but, being something of a chancer by nature, I had opted to try my luck. In a sense, I was proved right. My assessment of the mooring situation turned out to be a good call, but without divine insight, to sling one’s hook into the remains of some poor soul’s ‘Deux Chevaux’ can only be chalked up as exquisite misfortune. Happily, perseverance redressed the balance in the end. The 112lb fisherman flipped clear after an hour’s creative ‘backing and filling’, to break the surface with nothing worse than a sun visor in its flukes just as I was looking up ‘scrap-man’ in my French dictionary.
My real comeuppance for tripping-line denial arrived some miles up the idyllic River Fal. The chart is graphically specific about big-ship mooring tackle in my chosen anchorage, but I convinced myself that the chains would have long since sunk deep down into the mud, never to trouble honest mariners again. This time I was caught out as the foolish optimist I was. I snagged my gear comprehensively in 25ft at low water and had to pay a diver to clear it.
The only man I sailed with who was actually pleased to foul his anchor had no home other than his boat. Always favouring direct action, he had fallen foul of the law following a misunderstanding outside a pub one Saturday night. He’d said nothing about the fallout from this event until we came to anchor in a creek with a bad reputation for nasties on the bottom. I asked if he wanted me to rig a tripping line, but he would have none of it. Laying out a mighty length of chain cable with his best bower on the end, he said simply: “With a bit of luck, this lot’ll grab one of those old wartime ground chains.”
I still had some sympathy with the philosophy of hoping for the best rather than bothering with a tripline, but to find a man actively trying to snarl up his gear was a first.
“I’m up before the bench in a couple of days,” he explained. “If the arresting officer has his way, the beaks’ll send me down for a couple of months, but hooking that heavy gear will leave the boat safe as houses and I won’t have to pay mooring charges while I’m sewing mailbags for Her Majesty.”
Lessons learnt
The anchor fouled comprehensively and ever since I have been less reticent about deploying a tripping line, but only when needs demand. I use a buoy to float it clear of the main cable unless I’m only stopping for a tide or two, and this season I’m going to be careful about two extra points: each time I rig one, I’m resolved to tie my engine keys into the mainsheet to remind me to retrieve it before my propeller does the job for me, and I’m never going to leave my favourite ‘polyform’ floating around near a fairway.
More from Tom Cunliffe
- Managing Bilge Pump Issues at Sea: Tom Cunliffe’s Column
- The Importance of Safety Gear: Tom Cunliffe’s Word of Warning
- How to Sail on a Budget: Tom Cunliffe’s Column
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