Bungee cords, anchor rode

Yesterday the wind hit 56 kph from the WSW (240º) at 4 pm. I was at my boat then, and saw that she's quite protected from that direction. There was a lot of shrieking and halyard-banging coming from the rigging of the larger boats on the more exposed docks. The water off the Island was all big whitecap waves.

What I've noticed is that there's a fair bit of movement of the docks and the boat, and the boat was getting jarred when its motion was stopped by the dock lines. I didn't want my cleats pulled out, so yesterday I got some solid rubber bungee cords and put them on (photos are from today). 

Bow dock lines:

The loops in the dock lines are lineman's loops.

 

The port aft bungee cord was too long, so I replaced the inboard hook with some light line and fastened it to a cleat. I may just get a smaller bungee:

The starboard aft one was the perfect size to hook into the eye bolt that I installed for the corner of the boom tent. Both of these aft ones were hooked to the eye splice on the dock end of the dock lines.

 

I like the next photo for the reflections:

The bungee cords worked great: there was no jarring as dock lines hit the end of their extensions in that big wind. And they were still attached today when I went.

Yesterday I also repositioned the cam cleats that I'd installed on the boom for the jiffy reefing, using small horn cleats for that instead. I realized that I needed the cam cleats more for the jib sheets than for the jiffy reefing. 

Port side:

Starboard side:

Today I also put the mizzen back on. You can see it in two of the photos above. I took it off because of a storm forecast last week or so, and put it back on today thinking I might go sailing. But no wind. So, because of seeing how protected the spot is, I left it on. It's too much of a hassle to take off and put back on again, and I don't think it's going to come to harm.

The other thing I did today was to attach the small grapple anchor to the 150' or so of poly 3-strand. This is for an emergency so I at least have something ready to heave over. The 5 kg claw (Bruce) will need its own line. I'm thinking of getting nylon for that.

I tied the bitter end to an eye under the deck and handed the line into a bag. It's kept under one of the cockpit seats so it's handy. I didn't use a shackle because the shackle is supposed to be the weakest link—but really because I didn't think it through. However, there are still a couple of shackles there: one holding some ⅜" chain to the anchor, and one between the ⅜" and the ¼" chain that you see above—so I could use this line with the big anchor if I wanted.