The missing ten feet were one thing. The missing rope section suggested that the paperwork and the anchor locker had been maintaining separate accounts.
I was marking the chain so I could tell how much had gone overboard. Finding out how much existed seemed a reasonable first step. It also saved me from planning a very attractive 200-foot mark with nowhere to put it.
Anchor chain is wonderfully consistent stuff. Link, link, link, link. This is useful for holding the boat and less useful for answering “How much have I let out?” A long stretch of unmarked chain offers plenty of information about being chain and very little about distance.
I needed the answer to be on the links.
Two colors, not a memory test
My marking code uses red for 25 feet and white for 100. The bands add up. That gives me seven regular marks without needing seven different colors, a mnemonic, or a small exam before anchoring:
- 25 feet: one red.
- 50 feet: two reds.
- 75 feet: three reds.
- 100 feet: one white.
- 125 feet: one white and one red.
- 150 feet: one white and two reds.
- 175 feet: one white and three reds.
At 150 feet, for example, the white supplies the hundred and the two reds supply the fifty. There is still arithmetic involved, but the chain is doing most of the explaining.
The 175-foot mark is the last regular mark, not the end of the chain. With approximately 190 feet aboard, about 15 feet remain beyond it. Those are two different numbers worth keeping straight. Otherwise, the next version of the boat's history could acquire another mysterious change in length, and I have already had my turn correcting that story.
Making a long object readable
With the chain laid out in several runs and cardboard beneath the work areas, the job became cleaning and applying the distance marks. The finished red and white groups break up what would otherwise be a very long collection of nearly identical links.
There is something appealing about a boat improvement whose interface is paint. No display to mount, no menu to find, no connection to persuade. The information lives on the thing I need information about. In this case, keeping the system simple means counting bands rather than remembering a color wheel.
Once the cleaning and marking were complete, the chain went back aboard and the anchor was secured. The same chain that came out of the locker returned with a better explanation of itself.
I started with a survey description. I ended with a measured length and a code that tells me where I am along it. The boat still has approximately 190 feet of chain, but at least now the chain and I are working from the same numbers.
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