grappling hook Archives - Small Boats Magazine

Article Tag: grappling hook

Grappling Hooks

Photographs by the author

The Zhike Gravity Hook, left, and the Lixada 4-Claw Hook work in different ways and both performed well.

The grappling hook (also known as a grappling iron or grapnel) that I made a while back from some stainless-steel rod and a few cable ties worked well enough, but it was an awkward and dangerous thing to keep in a small boat. It rested with one claw always pointing straight up, like a caltrop, an ancient and wicked device of war that wounded anyone unlucky enough to step on it. Modern grappling hooks aren’t so hazardous. I found two different types, both welcome to stay aboard waiting for the opportunity to retrieve something underwater.

Lixada 4-Claw Hook

Opened up, the Lixada’s claws span 8-1/2″.

The Lixada 4-Claw Hook is 9″ long, has a span of 8-1/2″ between the tips of opposing claws, and weighs 26.3 oz. The central shaft is stainless steel and the claws, my magnet tells me, are some sort of steel alloy. The claws spin around the shaft on an internal threaded rod that pushes the round cap at the bottom out so the claws can pivot outward or fold against the shaft. Spinning the claws in the opposite direction locks them either in or out. The folding design makes the 4-Claw Hook quite compact and prevents the claws from digging into woodwork or the bottoms of my feet when stowed. The device is rated to 860 lbs, more than I could imagine ever subjecting it to, and the serrated claws keep whatever has been hooked from slipping away. It’s an elegant design with an aggressive grip.

The large round disk at left moves in and out on a threaded rod. Here it keeps the claw tips safely up next to the shaft.

 

The Lixada was quick to snag this 60-lb ride-share bike and held on to it during the lift to the dock.

 

 

Zhike Gravity Hook

On contact with something, the Gravity Hook’s jaws open up. The single plate on the jaw at left will slip about 1/4″ into the space between the double plates on the right, preventing slender items from slipping out.

The Zhike Gravity Hook is 5-3/8″ long, 3-1/2″ wide, and weighs 8.9 oz. The device is made of stainless steel except for the nuts and bolts—the magnet says they’re steel. The four pivot points allow the jaws at the bottom to open upon contact with something, then close when the Gravity Hook is pulled upward. For use as a grappling hook, a separate cross piece is set between the articulated jaws and two O-rings are rolled into a pair of notches to keep the device from opening and dropping the cross piece. The hook is rated to 772 lbs, more than enough for retrieving anything from a small boat.

When the cross-plate is installed, two O-rings roll down into a pair of notches and keep it securely held in place.

In its grappling hook configuration, you can cast about and drag for lost items, and it will snag line and chain, the wire basket and tubing of a shopping cart, but not anything with a diameter over 1-1/2″. For retrieving small objects like glasses and key rings, the Gravity Hook’s ability to grasp things make it better suited than an ordinary grappling hook. Using the opening jaws is best done when you can see what you’re fishing for. If you don’t have clear, undisturbed water, a face mask or a bathyscope will be helpful. The jaws have to be set directly upon whatever you’re after, so you need to be directly above it; and they have to be crossing the object, not parallel to it, so you have to be able to see what you’re doing. That said, we were able to grab a lost bright orange cinch cord on the first try.

The Gravity Hook got a hold on this sunken cinch cord on the first try. The milfoil came up on one of the hooks.

With both devices, it’s possible to get hooked on some immoveable object and join the ranks of items stuck on the bottom. Neither has an attachment point for a retrieval line, the kind used to retrieve a snagged anchor, but you could tie one on if you decide to go fishing blindly, or dive for it if the conditions and your ability allow.

The promotional copy for both devices suggests you can use them for climbing, just as Batman did with his grappling hook in the 1960s TV series. But if you’re going to throw the hook up to the top of a building or over a tree branch, you may not be able to get the grappling hook back if you can’t climb up to it. The Lixada and Zhike devices both supported my 220 lbs, but climbing is risky business, especially if what’s holding you up can get dislodged.

Both of these devices have the ability to save the day if something valuable is lost overboard in shallow water; they also can provide great entertainment fishing for the treasures that accumulate around the docks at marinas and launch ramps.

Christopher Cunningham is editor of Small Boats Magazine.

The Lixada 4-Claw Hook cost $33.99; the Zhike Gravity Hook, $14.29. Both were purchased via Amazon.

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Getting Beneath the Surface

After an afternoon kayaking outing on one of the last warm summer afternoons of the year, I returned to the dock where I’d put in to pry myself out of the cockpit. There was a man in the water hanging on to the end of the dock. I asked him how the water was, thinking he was in there to cool off, but he made it clear that he wasn’t swimming for pleasure: “My girlfriend threw my pants in the water and all my money is in the pockets.”

I peered into the water that was in my shadow. On the bottom I could just make out a shopping cart and a green ride-share bike, but no pants. He said they were farther out, but on that side of my kayak there was only glare. I hauled myself up on the dock and wished him luck, as much for finding his pants as for finding a new girlfriend.

On the drive home I regretted not doing anything more to help, but he had a diving mask on, so if the pants were somewhere near the dock, he’d be able to see and retrieve them; the water there is only about 12′ deep.

The incident got me thinking about being better prepared to recover something that has dropped in the water. About 100 yards from that same dock, the rudder for my gunning dory slipped free and has been on the bottom. I wasn’t prepared then to recover it, and now, 20 years later, I can’t remember just where it would be. Recovering the rudder might have been possible if I could have done two things: see it clearly through the surface, and get a line hooked on it.

My son, Nate, used an underwater video system to retrieve this outboard that had gone AWOL three days earlier. The yellow video monitor is between his shins and he’s holding the 60′ cable that connects it to the underwater camera.

More recently, I was testing an electric outboard motor that suddenly pried its tiller from my hand, turned sideways, and wrenched itself off the transom. (It’s the very last time I used an outboard without having it tied to a safety line.) The motor went down in about 30′ of water in the middle of the shipping canal, too deep and too dangerous for me to look for it by free-diving. I went home,  made a grappling hook out of steel rod, and connected it to a long line and my little underwater video camera. It took three outings at the canal to find the motor, and it was only with my son’s help manning the hook and watching the monitor while I rowed a search pattern and dodged boat traffic that we found and recovered the outboard.

The motorwell on the Caledonia yawl is located just to port of the skeg. The plug that fills the hole when the motor is not in use has a window. The box-like plug is also a handy place to toss my hat.

When I built my Caledonia yawl, I incorporated a simple device for seeing into the water. The plug that fills the motorwell while I’m rowing or sailing has a plexiglass bottom. It comes in handy when I’m sailing in shallow water and need to keep an eye on the bottom, but it has some limitations. When I was exploring the fringes of Yellow Island in Puget Sound’s San Juan archipelago, I got a brief glimpse of the tip of a submerged boulder just before it tore my rudder off.

My helmet required weights front and back—about 90 lbs altogether—to get it to sink the volume of air inside it.

I’ve had my best view of the underwater world with a hard-hat diving helmet I made out of plywood and plexiglass. A plastic pump for inflating rafts, manned by someone I can trust, supplies air through a 50’ length of garden hose. I made my first dive with it in a marina, and I was quite content to just sit on the bottom, 12’ down, looking out across the sandy wasteland under the docks. I could have stayed there for quite a while, but I could tell by the diminishing airflow that my pump man was getting tired.

With air pulsing through the garden hose, our friend Bobbie begins his descent while Nate looks on.

 

While the helmet’s four windows offer a good view of the underwater world, the noise of the bubbles in the helmet gets to be quite loud. It’s not exactly tranquil.

An easier way to see underwater is through a different kind of windowed plywood box, one used at the surface. On the south coast of Menorca in the Mediterranean, I saw fishermen wading in the shallows, bent over with their faces pressed into things that looked like oversized megaphones. They had openings at the top to fit around their eyes and windows on the bottom. I never found out what they were looking for, but I was intrigued by their devices, called bathyscopes or aquascopes. They’ve been around for quite a while, perhaps almost as long as window glass has been.

The contoured opening keeps light from getting into the bathyscope and making distracting reflections on the plexiglass window. I’ll add foam strips to the perimeter for comfort.

After worrying for a while about the unfortunate man who’d lost his pants, I made a bathyscope from stuff I had lying around the shop: some leftover mahogany plywood, oak from a desk I’d made years ago, a scrap of 1/4″ plexiglass, and a pair of brass window-sash handles. The top end is 3″ x 5-3/4″ with cutouts for my forehead and nose. I pressed a length of lead-free solder to my face to make a contoured pattern.

The 1/4″ plexiglass window sits in the recess created by the trim framing the bottom of the bathyscope. A thin bead of silicone caulking, applied only on the outside, makes a watertight seal that will allow easy removal of the plexiglass if it needs to be replaced.

 

Painting the interior flat black eliminates reflections and improves the view.

The window at the bottom is 7″ x 10″ and recessed in the trim pieces at the bottom so it won’t get scratched when set down. The interior is painted flat black to make the best of the underwater view. The handles are angled for a comfortable grip and offset from one another vertically to provide firmer control if the water’s a bit unsettled.

I had a clear view of the bottom off the end of the dock, but I saw no sign of the missing pants, just a shopping cart and a bicycle.

The bathyscope was ready a few days after I’d met the man looking for his pants, so when I returned to the dock with it and a grappling hook I didn’t have much hope of finding the pants, or reconnecting them with their owner if I did. I got a good look at the bike and the shopping cart, guided the hook to them, and hauled them up. There were no markings on the cart, so I’m stuck with that. I took the bike to a service center where the company repairs them. The technician there recognized it as an older model, so it had been missing for quite a long time.

While letting the boat drift at the end of its painter, Nate scanned the bottom for treasure.

With winter coming, the water here will be getting much clearer. I’m planning on rowing around the marina with my bathyscope, grappling hook, and a large magnet. I suspect the water there has been hiding all manner of treasures under its mask of ripples and reflections.