Boaters who regularly anchor in rivers and estuaries will have experienced the horrible situation where their chain/rope and anchor comes up caked in stinking mud and sludge. Anyone anchoring frequently anywhere in the murky waters of Florida’s Intercoastal Waterway, (ICW), would consider an anchor wash system absolutely essential because the ICW is mainly non-tidal and the bottom is mostly sedentary thick black mud which an anchor must penetrate to find better holding beneath. Once an anchor digs through the mud it usually holds well, but when weighing half the bottom usually comes up glued to the chain and anchor in the form of a smelly oozing sludge over a layer of hard clay.
Even when wet this concrete-like substance is very difficult to clean off an anchor and if left to dry it is practically impossible to remove from chain. I have seen people trying to poke it off their anchor with a boat hook, or dipping a deck-brush in the water then valiantly attempting to wash the black crud off their chain and foredeck. My schooner has a long bowsprit and pulpit which the twin anchors come up beneath, so it’s impossible to clean the anchors with either method. Before making my deck-wash system I used to 
dangle the anchor in the bow-wake as we motored away, but that’s not advisable if you only have a short bow roller because the anchor will bump against the bow. I would even pile the dirty chain on deck then swill it with buckets of water before stowing it. All this rigmarole took the pleasure out of getting underway—or rather, it used to.
You can of course buy complete deck-wash kits from chandlers’ stores and on the web.They cost anything from about $200 to $500, depending on the pump pressure and whatever ancillary equipment they include, like hoses, a nozzle, a filter, pipe fittings, etc. They are primarily meant to be hard-mounted below deck, the water from a seacock or other seawater source to a pump and then to a deck outlet fitting, normally near the bow, to which is attached a water hose and nozzle. These kits don’t usually include connecting pipework, or electrical wiring that adds to the cost of installation.
A powerful deck-wash system is about the only effective way to clean a dirty anchor/chain/rode as it comes up to the bow and ensuring it passes into the chain locker in a reasonably unsoiled and un-smelly condition. This is especially important when a smelly chain is stored under the fo’c’sle berth.
Providing the hose is long enough on a fixed system it can also double as an actual deck-wash—but that’s all it does. A fixed system cannot be used to pump rainwater out of a dinghy; or to act as an additional bilge pump; or to wash a bilge, or any other job for which a powerful water jet would be useful. To wash a deck a much longer hose is needed than to simply clean ground tackle. In other words a fixed system is not very versatile with few other uses. A portable deck-wash can be used for all these functions and anything else you need to pump water on or off, or out of your boat or dinghy. I found another home use as well—emptying an ornamental fountain in my back yard that I could never get completely empty with a small bailer.
Furthermore, the equipment and assembly of a portable anchor wash is simplicity itself, consisting only of a pressure pump, two lengths of regular garden hose, one with a weight on the end to keep it underwater, and a hand nozzle, Operation is equally simple. The inlet pipe is just hung anywhere over the side into the water and the pump is connected to a battery. The pump then sucks seawater up and shoots a powerful jet of water through the hand nozzle.
The main item of course is the pump, and there are many on the market to suit different budgets and pressure needs. The only common requirements are: the pump should be self-activating, (also called an on-demand pump), that is, it starts and stops when pressure changes in the line as the hand nozzle is opened and closed. This makes the operation semi-automatic and saves the need for an on-off switch. The pump must also be self-priming, with adequate lifting capacity from the waterline because if it is not powerful enough to suck water up it obviously won’t work. Diaphragm pumps are preferable to impeller pumps since they can run dry, enabling the lines to be pumped empty after use for stowage. Also, unlike an impeller pump a diaphragm pump has no “kick” as it starts up, meaning it won’t fall over or roll-off wherever you place it. On-demand deck-wash pumps are similar to those used for pressurizing freshwater systems, sink faucets, and showers.
After looking at many pump specifications I decided on the Aqua-Jet WD 5.2 wash-down pump from the Johnson Pumps Company. Pump. This is one of the more powerful pumps with a 70psi pressure, (about the same as a house), and easily sucks water up my boat's 4-foot freeboard. The pump also has a detachable easy to clean filter that saves having to buy a separate one. The filter also swivels, allowing the outlet hose to point forward or back making it easier to use. Included with the pump is a hand nozzle, that can be locked in the open position which makes it easier to use when cleaning an upcoming chain. The nozzle fits on the hose with a push fitting that doesn’t have to be unscrewed when you need to remove it to achieve a continuous higher flow as when emptying a dinghy or as a bilge pump. There are four large rubber feet under the baseplate of the pump, so it can be placed anywhere on deck with little fear of it damaging anything. The pump comes with fittings for 1/2-inch and 5/8-inch water hoses, and it is best to use the larger size hose, that has some 60% greater volume and gives the maximum water flow. This pump is available from most marine suppliers and on the web. (part #10-13407-07 for 12-volts but also available for 24 volts).
I bought an inexpensive 15-foot long by 5/8-inch garden hose, which I cut into 6-foot and a 9-foot lengths and attached them to the pump fitting with clamp-type hose fittings. Six feet is long enough to easily hang over the side of my boat and the discharge pipe does not need to be very long at all because the system is portable and can be moved anywhere. To keep the end underwater I weighted it with two brass fittings from my local hardware store. One has a 5/8-inch barb for the hose and a 3/4-inch NPT thread, onto which I screwed another brass nut for added weight. There is no need for a filter on this pipe because the pump has one built in.
For power I found a couple of crocodile clips, like used on car jump-leads, in my local auto parts store which I soldered to a long enough 14 AWG wire to reach any of my 12-volt batteries. Do not be tempted to use a cigarette lighter type receptacle that you might have in your cockpit. They can get quite warm and shouldn’t be used for the continuous current draw of these powerful pumps, which for the Johnson 12-volt unit is 15amps on start-up.
To set up the hoses I hang the inlet hose through the bow, stern or midship’s mooring hawse hole in the gunwales which stops the pump from falling overboard. After clipping the power on to the nearest 12-volt battery the pump begins to hum, but nothing else happens—until the hand nozzle is squeezed whereupon the pump starts sucking water through the pipes and delivers an incredibly powerful 15-foot long jet that will knock the muck of any anchor and chain. The long-reaching jet enables me to hit the chain immediately it comes out of the water and if you have an electric windlass you can bring the chain up as quickly as you like. Washing the anchor is also easy before it even reaches the bow roller. If the pipes become clogged with sucked-up debris the pump filter is easily unscrewed and cleaned. The hoses can also be unclipped from the pump by hand with the quick-release connectors for emptying the pipes for storage.
When I want to wash any part of my deck I just drop the hose over either side, connect the power and fire away. Whenever my dinghy gets full of rainwater I simply drop the end of the hose in the boat and pump it dry in just a few minutes—all from on deck—which beats climbing into the waterlogged dinghy with a hand-bailer any day! When used as a drain pump for a bilge the pump will fill a five gallon bucket in 1½ minutes.
This is a deceptively simple system that works amazingly well and very versatile for many other purposes, yet it is cheaper than a kit with a comparable power pump. That’s something of a rarity in the marine equipment business nowadays don’t you think?