Hook on hawsepipe cover

[Capt Hook]

I've always been puzzled by the hook on the underside of the hawsepipe cover. I never had a hawsepipe before.

Suddenly it dawned on me. Is the purpose of that hook to hook a link of the anchor chain on it to help hold the cover on?

Pardon me for being so dumb as to not come up with the obvious sooner.

[Jim Walsh]

[quote="Capt Hook" was ]I've always been puzzled by the hook on the underside of the hawsepipe cover. I never had a hawsepipe before.

Suddenly it dawned on me. Is the purpose of that hook to hook a link of the anchor chain on it to help hold the cover on?

Pardon me for being so dumb as to not come up with the obvious sooner.[/quote]

Yes. I hook the chain so about a foot hangs to keep it in place. When out in rough weather or at sea where the foredeck is always picking up some spray it pays to seal the cover with a bit of tape. A bung of cork or rubber will also serve the purpose but I’ve found the self sealing rigging tape serves the purpose and stays in place well.

[Tod Mills]

FWIW, that piece of hardware is more properly called a "deck pipe".

If there were a tube connected to the deck pipe leading to a chain locker (possibly located under the v-berth), that tube would be a "spurling pipe".

If you had bulwarks on your boat (at least tall toe rails), the hawse pipe would be the fitting that forms a hole through the bulwark through which a hawser would be led. On a ship, the hawse pipe normally passes through not just a bulwark, but a portion of the hull.

The hook also allows you to disconnect the chain rode from the anchor and have the end handy when you want to reconnect it. You might do this for a longer passage where you want to thoroughly seal up the deck pipe and possibly remove the anchor from the bow to store below in case of rough weather during the passage.

[John Stone]

Good info Todd. I call it a chain pipe since I have a pipe on the underside of the deck pipe. I’ll have to work spurling into my vocabulary. But, I call the fitting through my bulwarks hawes holes not hawes pipes.