The old chain was so rusted, I wasn’t sure if it would really hold or not, and that was one of those things I couldn’t get out of my mind when sleeping on the boat. So 280 feet of new chain and we are set.

The first time we anchored the boat I realized how rusted our chain really was, but we had more urgent things to replace or fix. Today we replaced the anchor chain with 280 feet of new galvanized chain.

I purchased some rustoluem paint for different colors. Pink at 50ft, red at 100ft, yellow at 150ft, green at 200ft, and red/pink/yellow strips on the last 20ft before the end of the chain.

Now I can be confident that the chain will be solid enough to hold the boat when we anchor.

One thing I really noticed was how the chain is pulled up by the windlass (technically a capstan due to the vertical axis) there is no jamming, it just flows smoothly into the chain locker. Previously when the chain was rusted it would get stuck and bind up before falling into the chain locker.