In over six years living on a boat in Florida, we have not had the displeasure to experience a hurricane. Our plan was dependant upon where we were and where we could haul out or hole up. Our ground tackle wasn’t sufficient. We basically didn’t have much of a plan at all. We are changing that now.

The first step was to purchase a storm anchor. Our shiny new 73 pound Rocna arrived today, along with 200 feet of 3/8″ high-test chain. (33 is kilograms)

We plan to use it in a tandem anchor rig, in the event of a hurricane.

tandem anchor rig is where two anchors are somehow connected in line with each other, on a single rode which is deployed from the boat. “Rig” refers to the entire system deployed in the water, i.e. anchors and rode, including shackles and/or swivels.

There is no standard for this, but for this article the terms will be defined as follows. The primary anchor is the aft-most anchor, i.e. that closest to the boat. The tandem anchor is the forward most, i.e. that out in front of the primary.

The rode is split into two sections, the primary rode and the tandem rode. The tandem rode is either attached to the front of the primary anchor or is simply an extension of the primary rode. We’ll use our primary anchor as the tandom anchor in this setup. It’s a 44 pound Bruce, which will give us a total of 117 pounds of anchor down there. For more on the tandem rig see this link:

http://www.petersmith.net.nz/boat-anchors/tandem-anchoring.php