The Monster in the Anchor Locker

The Monster in the Anchor Locker

The Monster to whom I refer is, or rather was, the giant ball of twisted chain that took up almost seventy feet of chain that we could not use. This morning Dad and I launched a determined assault on the dreaded ball of chain. First step: pull all the chain out on deck. More difficult then it sounds, because to do that you have to pull the chain up through the hawse pipe. The hawse pipe is the tube that leads from the chain locker up to the windlass on deck, and if the chain is twisted, it will jam in the pipe. The only other way is to empty the fore cabin, where Dad sleeps by the way, remove all the mattresses, and pull the chain onto the boards beneath the bunk. This is rather extreme, and would require the whole day to do properly, so we proceeded with the original plan. Dad untwisted the chain in the anchor locker and I was on deck, pulling the chain out. It took us about two hours to get it all out, and as dad untwisted the chain, the twists moved down the chain and added to the dreaded ball. To properly untwist the ball required lifting it up, and the thing weighed more than thirty pounds, and in the anchor locker, you get very little leverage. Then, we had to completely untwist the chain on deck, not an easy task, we had to untwist almost ninety feet of heavy chain. Feeding it back in was easier, but the whole task took more than three hours, but it was a big task that is now out of the way, and hopefully we won't have to do it again.
--Orion Date
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