An easy way to double the life of your anchor rode is to swap the rope part end-for-end when the rope-to-chain splice begins to show significant wear. This places the well-used outboard end inboard, where it won’t get as much use, and puts the relatively unused inboard portion out front where it will get used all the time. Obviously, if the rope is worn so far that you don’t trust it at all, you ought to replace it entirely.

In either case, your chain is probably fine, and you’ll need to splice the rope to the chain. There are riggers in every maritime town ready to do this for you.

Or, you can do it yourself, as I’ve done here. I splice eyes in the end of three-strand rope all the time, and I’ve done a few backsplices. This was my first rope-to-chain splice, and I was a little bit intimidated about it. Rope to chain…sounds difficult.

Turns out it’s not that hard. In fact, it may be the easiest splice to do. You can find a good set of instructions at Animated Knots By Grog. He says to use five full tucks.

There are a couple of ways to finish the splice, but the important thing is to taper the splice to allow it to feed through your anchor windlass as easily as possible. If you don’t have a windlass, you can finish it the easy way: make your five tucks and cut of the ends off the three strands.

In my case, I wanted a taper, so I made four full tucks with all three strands, plus one additional tuck with one strand, and two more tucks with the third. Then take a hot knife and trim the ends close to the standing part of the rope. This tapers the splice pretty well, but since my windlass isn’t working right now, I can’t guarantee that it will feed.

I’ve got my fingers crossed. Success or failure, I’ll report it here.