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The purpose of anchoring a marine vessel is to fix the position of its bow (and sometimes its stern) when:
For these reasons all marine vessels larger than 19 feet must have at least one anchor. How a crew drops and lays an anchor depends on the current, wind, seabed conditions and water depth. In high winds, strong currents and/or deep water, the crew must release more chain when setting the anchor. Regardless of conditions, the crew must know the length of released chain in real time. The device used to raise/lower the anchor is called a "windlass". In these two photos you can see how crew members, years ago, would use a windlass to weigh (raise) anchor:
Below you can view a video of how anchors are lowered today on the largest ships in the world. You will notice that a set of painted links pass through the chain guide as the anchor is released. A crew member will shout out when one passes by, have it confirmed by 1-2 additional crew members and recorded. Those links are color coded and spaced a measured distance (e.g. 30 feet) along the full length of the chain. This is how they measure the length of chain released on an aircraft carrier. Multiple crew members check each other during this operation since it is easy to lose count as the chain is released. You will find very few boats with demarcated chain links as painting/measuring a chain is tedious, the paint chips off after just a few anchoring cycles and crew members easily lose count. Today, there is no widely practiced method for measuring chain length in real time during an anchoring operation, despite its importance to the safety of boat and crew.
AnchorAway has developed an application running on an iPhone or iPad (Android coming soon) utilizing the device’s built in camera to measure the real time rotation of the windlass as an anchor chain is released or recovered. This patented approach to measuring the anchor chain length uses state of the art MACHINE VISION and ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AI to track the windlass as it rotates. The application computes the released anchor chain length using the diameter of the gypsy (the mechanism around which the chain moves). That diameter is measured by the same AnchorAway application using state of the art AUGMENTED REALITY. The gypsy measurement is done once and is only repeated if the chain, windlass or gypsy are changed.
For the first time, it is not only possible to measure chain length but also the rate of its release alongside the boat speed, and share the data via wireless communications with crew members ..... all in real time.
