Our J/109 has a great anchor locker as well as a removable anchor roller, but no windlass, and there is no way in hell we are adding all that weight up forward on this boat.

No worries. Our eWincher, driving a two-speed primary cockpit winch, hauls the rode as fast, or maybe a bit faster, than the massive windlass on our last boat, and there is plenty of power, to the point that I would be confident of hauling the boat up to the anchor in say 25 knots of wind.

One small fly in the ointment: our anchor rode is 8-strand braid and catches on the stripper on the self-tailing winch, so someone must tail the line off the winch.

Read our three-part in-depth review of eWincher to see if it’s right for you, before you blow a bunch of money on electric winches.

With hurricane Fiona heading our way I have just checked our mooring bridle attachment and swivel.

To make this easy, even though the chain is quite heavy because it was sized for our last boat, I attach a spinnaker halyard to the bridle and hoist it up while it runs over the bow roller, as shown.

Way easier and less messy than attaching a line to the bridle and running back to a sheet winch.

Note that this only works in winds under about 8 knots since more breeze will blow the boat back and cause the bridle to jump out of the roller.

The North Atlantic heating up in the last week got me working on preparing our new-to-us J/109 for a strike.

We have always added a backup pendant before expected winds of storm force or over, but in the past it was chain. Now, with a smaller boat and the availability of high-modulus rope, we are going with 1/2″ Dyneema 12-strand single braid. Spliced it up yesterday.

Given that the break load is three times more than the boat weighs, it should be strong enough, but of course chafe is always the issue, more than strength.

• More on backup pendants
• More on prepping a boat for heavy weather at the mooring