Anchored in La Cruz - chain cleaning and untwisting? Found solution to twisting! - 2014

Beginning of March 2014 - La Cruz Anchorage, Banderas Bay, Mexico

Using a round file to clean inside of link.

 We had to move out into deeper water because theSea of Cortés (Gulf of California) is sending us some wind and some swells. Now we will take the swells for surfing but hold the wind. They can keep the nasty weather they have up in the sea. We lived in San Diego, southern California for many years and want to be in the tropics. The sea is so close to California they get much the same weather I think. Heck you can drive to the US for the weekend. 

So, this means another opportunity to clean and untwist the anchor chain!!

Took the roller off in the anchor locker so I could clean longer lengths at a time.

Shows our Lewmar H3 windless with 3\8 gypsey.

Un-twisting 3\8 chain.

Scrub-a-dub-dub!

Only a 100 ft to go!

The usual suspects.

 So out into the middle of the anchorage we went but all the way on the far end. We put out all our chain 180’ so we really have about 160-170 ft out for a good 6-1 rode.

All done and re- anchored with lots of rode, actually over-scoped.

We moved out away from land for the weather coming.

Notice our solar light on the bow to help pangas navigate, not so great as it dims out at about 4:00 am. 😕

 We have 180’ ft of chain so actually got into the spliced-on rode. We have chain coming into the anchor locker but barely, just enough to get through the chain stopper.

 We tried our chain cleaning method and un-twisting. It will get easier as we go along. The chain was still a bit dirty from last time and it is getting cleaner. I did un-twist it as I went but the wind was picking up so I had to drag the boat forward by hand as I went. I did not want the diesel to be running for an hour or so that it takes to do my chain cleaning\untwisting. Next time less coffee or get an earlier start 😀
We will re-anchor back where we like it better in a couple\few days.
The surf \anchoring spot (Punta De Mita) where we go in Banderas Bay has a website that gives a has the surf report which we checked to see how big the predicted swell is going to be..
I wlil post more on this chain twisting soon.

Note:
 We found out how to solve the anchor chain twisting problem. Un-twist it!
Banderas Bay, Lewmar H3 windless: drop chain and CQR test