exactly how did you rig your anchor with the u bolts on your canoe?
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exactly how did you rig your anchor with the u bolts on your canoe?
Joe Hyde has a two part article in the warmwater archives( or panfish) about how he did it with pictures.
Rick
Hi, I followed Joe's plan with apologies. Instead of those sacks I poured sand into empty plastic jugs, then tied nylon rope to the jug handles and tie them off on the forward thwart. Now I'm in the mood for those sacks, and I think the sand will work perfectly. Jugs hanging off the starboard or whatever tend to make tracking a nightmare. BTW, the u-bolts sure help stabalize the canoe when tieing it down on my Explorer. Rick's right, though, check out Joe's articles. JGW
jalama,
Unfortunately, I can't recommend any ONE way to do it, and this is because of the difference in shapes that you see in the end caps of canoes.
In the case of my older Wenonah Rendezvous solo canoe, each end caps is shaped in such a way that a lip of protruding plastic wraps around the cap. I exploited that lip feature by drilling two parallel holes through it *at an angle* and then installing the U-bolt with the nuts on the bottom side of the lip. The result is a pair of very low-profile metal "loops" that I can run the anchor lines through.
But when Lawrence surgeon Cap Gray showed me his new Wenonah Vagabond solo (a canoe I recommended that he buy) I discovered that Wenonah now shapes their end caps differently. The Vagabond's end caps have no lip at all that Cap could drill through. He solved the problem by drilling a hole straight-on through the front cap and installing an eye bolt, with the nut on the inside of the boat. It was no easy task doing this, either, because any canoe's bow and stern will narrow to a point, and as you reach your hand back in there you run out of space to operate.
Even when Rick Z. and I were outfitting his larger, beamier tandem canoe this narrowing of interior work space at the bow and stern made it difficult to install U-bolts on his bow and stern end caps. At least, I thought it was difficult since I'm something of a klutz with tools.
There's a fair number of options you've got. U-bolts, eye bolts, chocks. Whatever you decide on, remember the primary considerations: 1) bringing the two anchor lines off the exact ends of your canoe or kayak (or as close to the ends as the boat's design limitations permit), and; 2) having the anchors locked in the raised position before getting underway so that your boat has no drag and makes no noise when moving through the water.
Joe
"Better small than not at all."
A friend with an aluminum canoe liked Joe's idea that I had done with my cedar strip and rigged a 1 x 4 with a pully that he clamps onto his decks when he heads out. I don't know how long it is. 16 inches maybe. At the end closest to him he uses a bolt that has a circle on the top end. Is that an eye-bolt that Joe's talking about? The nut helps serve as a stablizer for the clamp. At the very end is the pully. The eye-bolt helps keep the line straight for hte pully. Pretty nifty rig. Which shows you don't need to drill holes into a canoe deck unless you want to. The key to this system is having anchors for and aft. so you don't swing in the wind all day. JGW
Right, White! The bolt with a circle at one end, that's an eye-bolt. In the configuration you've described, that eye bolt functions as a "fairlead" that guides the anchor line into and away from the pulley.
Some configurations on this theme have a second eye bolt positioned durectly below the pulley, so that once the anchor line makes the pulley turn and heads downward it can't be pulled off the side of the pulley (if the boat suddenly yaws). Wise, because if the line comes untracked you lose the benefit of the end-of-canoe connection.
And no, you really DON'T have to drill holes in a canoe to enjoy the 2-anchor system. Check out some of the recent posts where FAOL folks have put photos of their canoes after they've outfitted them with a pair of "cat's paw" anchor outriggers.
The only reason I didn't go with cat's paws is because I didn't want to take time each trip to attach them to my canoe prior to launch, then take them off before racking. This said, I feel that properly designed and lubricated cat's paw outriggers are a superior solution to the problem; the pulley eliminates line friction and rubbing noises that my cruder system allows.
Still, the U-bolt fairlead system I installed on my canoe works very well for me. It doesn't make much noise because at the bend point my anchor line rubs across smooth, rounded hard plastic end caps. Best of all, the U-bolts are small and don't stand up very tall, and they stay on my canoe permanently. All I do once at the lake is run the anchor line through each one, cam cleat the line after each anchor is pulled to the raised position, and I'm outa there, Jack.
Joe
"Better small than not at all."