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Anchoring

By Sea Tow Capt. Les Hall

Basic anchoring guidelines:

Anchors are designed for specific bottom characteristics. Make sure that you buy an anchor designed for the type of bottom primarily encountered in your boating area. Even with a small boat, five or six feet of coated chain is desirable. Shackle the chain to the anchor. Put a thimble on the end of the anchor line and shackle that to the other end of the chain. Chose your anchor line carefully. A line that is too heavy will actually cause problems because you’ll loose the "elasticity" that absorbs the shock and keeps the anchor well set.

Pick your anchorage carefully. If there are other boats nearby, you will need to "guess" at their potential swing. A boat on a mooring will have very little swing but a Yacht at anchor may have considerable "scope" out and may swing widely. A shallow draft boat will be more affected, usually, by the wind whereas a deep draft boat will be more affected by the current.

Put your bow into the wind or current (whichever is having the greatest affect on your boat, power up slowly to or just beyond where you want your anchor to lie and check your forward motion with your reverse gear. Double check to ensure that the bitter end of your anchor line is attached to something sturdy on the boat. Most experienced boaters have watched at least one anchor with a few hundred feet on line disappear over the bow because they forgot to secure the end.

Don’t throw the anchor – it will probably get tangled. Release it by holding on to the chain or line, making sure that the chain and line are free, and dropping the anchor off the bow. If your anchor line was properly coiled, it will "pay-out" smoothly.

Once you see slack in the line, feed out the proper amount of scope as the boat drifts back. Hopefully, you’ve got your anchor line marked at 25’ increments. Average "recommended" scope is somewhere around 7 to 1 or 8 to 1 – that means that if you are in 20 feet of water you will want to pay-out between 140’ and 160’ of line. You also want to take into consideration the distance between the water line and the bow cleat and also any depth increase because of tides. If the tide may come in another 4 feet and your bow cleat is 3 feet above the water, you are, effectively, in 27 feet of water and would need to pay out around 200’ of line. Up to 15 to 1 scope may be necessary in strong winds or currents.

Once the scope is out, secure the line (cleat and chock) and "back down" on the anchor keeping your bow into the wind/current. Idle speed is usually sufficient to make the anchor "bite" into the bottom and "set."

Put the engine in neutral and get your "bearings." Find two points on each beam that form a natural "range" or line and a third either ahead or astern from which you may be able to judge distance. They can be other anchored boats, rocks, buoys or points on land. Sit there for a few minutes to make sure that none of the angles or distances to these points change. Any change would indicate that you are dragging and need to reset your anchor or pay out more scope – or both.

Now do whatever had planned to do when you decided to anchor and have fun doing it.