Remember that beautiful hit by The Righteous Brothers - Bobby Hatfield and Bill Medley - "Unchained Melody", used in the movie "Ghost", starring Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore? The song had been around awhile but seemed to become immortalized in its association with the pottery scene between Swayze and Moore.
For the last two hours, I've been listening to a different song, one generated by the grating and grinding of one hundred and seventy pounds of 5/8's-inch chain. As the chain has been unloaded, handled, lifted up and installed, I've heard just about every song metal scraping against metal can produce. When the chain is "loaded" into the anchor locker, the sound is at its loudest - a sort of banging, clanging, scraping sound accompanied by the groans of the automatic anchor winch. I kept thinking of Charles Dickens' classic, "A Christmas Carol", where the ghost of Christmas future gives the tightwad, Ebenezer Scrooge, a glimpse of his partner, Jacob Marley, in chains, or pictures from the old prisoner chain-gangs that helped build America's first railroad systems.
Chains do make a distinctive sound, with each link diameter having its own pitch. It would be a fascinating experiment to have different chains clanked about, testing what pitch resulted from the varying sized links.
I guess you could say I've been listening to my owned "Chained Melody". I don't plan on experiencing what chains would feel like next to my skin but I am thankful for the safety that chain affords when at anchor. And, I would like to add that I don't plan on finding any "missing links" in the chain that was just installed!
Here's to heavy metal.
Ancora imparo
