Broken shackle

We were washing down King Malu today and I happened to notice that the anchor chain was not connected to the anchor. On further investigation I found that the shackle holding the anchor to the chain had broken. We were very thankful that we had not lost the anchor or worse... the boat.

You can see how the shackle was suffering from metal fatigue, but it was not obvious because the area of fatigue was hidden by the swivel joint to the chain. This will become something for our annual inspection in the future.