Anchoring

RobbieW said:
Hi Vic
Having read the comments I think the theory is that the weight of the anchor starts to dig the point in if its left for a bit. I was going to try it over the next few days, my anchor has a damn great weight in the point so you never know it might work! Enjoying reading about your travels in Croatia, say hi to your co-skipper :)

Cheers ... Robbie
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Hi Robbie , hope you J and you are enjoying Greece ,its great place to sail ,Thanks for explain all that for me , As you know I such a novice sailor that I need I need all this stuff explained ,May I sugest you dont put too much water in the kettle that way you will be in time to stop yourself hitting the guy behind :) . I think we both know ,that might work now and them but on the whole it a accident waiting to happen , I guess you been in the Med long enough now to see the tens and tens of people who do just that and the next thing you know there are being shout at by the guy they are about to hit . we call it , dump the anchor and hope for the best .
but like me your such a novice at all this I think you might wait a little bit before putting that kettle on .
abho2
your are very right in what you said "Going astern too quickly seems to encourage the anchor to 'skate' across the bottom." going back at speed also dont work .
there are a few different ways to set the anchor , thats been tryed and tested for years and work , none are 100 pecent thats for sure but as a rule they do work , if you do it right , what I find worring is another novices sailor read these posting and next week end some poor guy take his family on a nice sail , will go out drop his anchor for the night and go and put the kettle on and if he is very luck the anchor will start to drag before he gets to put kettle on and he do it again this time propely , on the other hand if he is unlucky thatto say the wind and tide are just right , the anchor will hold then most likely just by it weight , while fast asleep the wind picks up and his anchor that was holding in a light breeze of wind with the tide helping it in place will soon be trying to cope with 15 or 20 kts and possibly a tide too and soon he will damaging mine or your yacht or worst on the rocks with a risk of life .

but then who am I to say how one should anchor I just a very novices sailor .

I was going to ask the question how they can tell what type sea bed was like by slowly going back and fro over it , maybe my depth sounder has some thing missing , but some how I don't think I want to know.
www.bluewatersailorcroatia.webs.com
 
Sailaboutvic,
I don't think anyone is saying drop the anchor and forget about it and not to keep a watch. What I suggest is that you have a delay between dropping the anchor and digging it in using the engine, the length of the delay would depend on the weather. Having the delay allows the boat to settle into the wind, the chain to straighten out and the anchor to settle into the mud.
 
Storyline said:
And anyway, all the fuss of getting fenders & warps out vs. switching on the relay and then pressing 'Down' on the windlass remote.
And, zero stress thinking about what the wind will be doing in the morning and how to get off the pontoon.
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You clearly have not spent hours cleaning east coast mud off your decks & getting it off your hands
As for stress getting out of a pontoon it is far easier than getting the hook up & manoeuvring from in amongst a load of other boats in a crowded anchorage
Oh & add not bobbing up & down all night getting sea sick or hanging on to cups & saucers before they crash on the floor
 
Two points.

Anchor alarm - I tend to set shallow and deep alarms on the depth sounder rather than the GPS. Being a smallish (25') boat, perhaps we tend to tuck in closer than many, but I find if a GPS guard circle is set large enough to avoid false alarms, I'd often be on the rocks to windward by the time it had gone off. With the depth alarm I can specify exactly at what depth I'd start to be worried.

How much to pull back - with young family on board we're not often out in anything above about a six. In those sort of winds, after a windshift I often find the last few metres of chain are still lying in the orientation it was laid out in rather than having been straightened out to the new wind direction - which to me implies I've effectively been lying to the chain not the anchor anyway! [Edit - having just read the "Anchor for decoration" thread I'll perhaps suggest that that last comment is made tongue in cheek!]
 
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Trop Cher said:
Sailaboutvic,
I don't think anyone is saying drop the anchor and forget about it and not to keep a watch. What I suggest is that you have a delay between dropping the anchor and digging it in using the engine, the length of the delay would depend on the weather. Having the delay allows the boat to settle into the wind, the chain to straighten out and the anchor to settle into the mud.
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Trop Cher said:
Sailaboutvic,
I don't think anyone is saying drop the anchor and forget about it and not to keep a watch. What I suggest is that you have a delay between dropping the anchor and digging it in using the engine, the length of the delay would depend on the weather. Having the delay allows the boat to settle into the wind, the chain to straighten out and the anchor to settle into the mud.
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Hi
the thread started so well with good some good answers .
i can’t see nothing wrong with what you just said , more or less it a good way to anchor . having a delay of a fee second after the anchor start to bit before digging it in is fine.
But that’s not quite what you wrote, another person then follow on this quote “ My tactics as well. Sometimes after 15 minutes or so I don't even bother digging in if all is good and holding. How many of us carry out the "use engine to dig in" procedure when the tide turns and the anchor re-sets in the middle of the night? “
How would he know it holding if he not tried it .?
another guy goes on to says “I checked the depth, then used chain 10x depth in up to 10 meters, “
This is followed on by another who talks about anchoring under kite .
Who in their right mind would go into an anchorage flying an Spinnaker, let alone then try and anchor with it up , surly your pulling all our legs .
I hoping these are not people I teaches to sail over the years ?

www,bluewatersailorcroatia.webs.com
 
sailaboutvic said:
But that’s not quite what you wrote, another person then follow on this quote “ My tactics as well. Sometimes after 15 minutes or so I don't even bother digging in if all is good and holding. How many of us carry out the "use engine to dig in" procedure when the tide turns and the anchor re-sets in the middle of the night? “
How would he know it holding if he not tried it .?
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Boats without engines have been known to anchor, believe it or not.
 
Another little tip: if the wind is fresh, tie a sturdy bucket over the bow and let it hang a few feet under the water. It limits sheering and the tug on the chain at each sheer extreme. Couple this with a snubber as well.
 
Victoria Sponge said:
If you're dropping the hook in a harbour and reversing back to the harbour wall, you don't have time to wait and see....
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victoria it really don't make any different to me if you belive what ia say or don't as long as you don't drop your hook in front of me or near me .
to answer your question, one would drop the hook way out the min three times the lenght of the boat four time or more is better , then as you go back still laying the chain and not dumping it when about a boat lenght from the wall you let the chain tiring up then slowly dig it in once your happy out goes more chain until you reach the wall .
it not difficult , just need to know how to do it and then do it right , if at the time you cant get the anchor to hold then stop going back and start again or you may be looking for someone who can do a gel coat repair the next day .
anchoring isnt difficult you just need to do it right .
www.bluewatersailorcroatia.webs.com
 
sailaboutvic said:
Hi
the thread started so well with good some good answers .
i can’t see nothing wrong with what you just said , more or less it a good way to anchor . having a delay of a fee second after the anchor start to bit before digging it in is fine.
But that’s not quite what you wrote, another person then follow on this quote “ My tactics as well. Sometimes after 15 minutes or so I don't even bother digging in if all is good and holding. How many of us carry out the "use engine to dig in" procedure when the tide turns and the anchor re-sets in the middle of the night? “
How would he know it holding if he not tried it .?
another guy goes on to says “I checked the depth, then used chain 10x depth in up to 10 meters, “
This is followed on by another who talks about anchoring under kite .
Who in their right mind would go into an anchorage flying an Spinnaker, let alone then try and anchor with it up , surly your pulling all our legs .
I hoping these are not people I teaches to sail over the years ?

www,bluewatersailorcroatia.webs.com
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The spinnaker and kite references were jokes!
I also queried the chain x10 in anything up to ten metres, as it didn't seem logical, the "x" element is more about weather not depth.
I've see people drop their anchors and then immediately give full revs in reverse and the anchor doesn't take.
I find that once I've dropped the anchor and laid out enough chain, there's no hurry to dig the anchor in with the engine as I'm not going anywhere. If there's enough wind, I can tell that the anchor has taken before I use the engine, the engine just digs it in a bit more.
 
JumbleDuck said:
Boats without engines have been known to anchor, believe it or not.
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OH dear I dint know that . thanks for leting me know .
anchoring under sail or picking up a mooring is a very simple thing to do .once to learn how to do it , I leard how to manoeuvre a boat under sail when I was about 10 , hey we didnt have engine then , we had to sail them back into the quay , so no big deal .
sailing a heave yacht in a crowed anchorage and then ziz zazing around moored boat looking for an spot to anchor then droping it under sail and hoping it will hold knowing very well if it don't with so many boats so close by your in for a big problem and a good chance of hitting another boat ,is a big deal . I would go as far to say it not responsible thing to do .

then we wound why people keep talking about bring in training for all .

www.bluewatersailorcroatia.webs.com
 
Trop Cher said:
The spinnaker and kite references were jokes!
I also queried the chain x10 in anything up to ten metres, as it didn't seem logical, the "x" element is more about weather not depth.
I've see people drop their anchors and then immediately give full revs in reverse and the anchor doesn't take.
I find that once I've dropped the anchor and laid out enough chain, there's no hurry to dig the anchor in with the engine as I'm not going anywhere. If there's enough wind, I can tell that the anchor has taken before I use the engine, the engine just digs it in a bit more.
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YES i did think at the tme you must be pulling all our legs :) i couldnt belive anyone with a brain would do that .
www.bluewatersailorcroatia.webs.com
 
sailaboutvic said:
anchoring under sail or picking up a mooring is a very simple thing to do .once to learn how to do it , I leard how to manoeuvre a boat under sail when I was about 10 , hey we didnt have engine then , we had to sail them back into the quay , so no big deal .
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Absolutely. It's a matter of developing skills rather than relying on an engine to do it all. Glad you agree.
 
Daydream believer said:
You clearly have not spent hours cleaning east coast mud off your decks & getting it off your hands
As for stress getting out of a pontoon it is far easier than getting the hook up & manoeuvring from in amongst a load of other boats in a crowded anchorage
Oh & add not bobbing up & down all night getting sea sick or hanging on to cups & saucers before they crash on the floor
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Yes, different places - we have mud oop north but not too clingy and most of the anchorages are pretty quiet as a rule - it is really the desire for solitude that is our prime driver - the rest was tongue in cheek ;), the amount of knitting on our foredeck (snubber, line to keep the snubber centred on the roller etc) after anchoring means that berthing is easier. Moorings are a pita though as we have to take the anchor off the bow so we always anchor (if there is room) rather than pick one up.

Video evidence of the knitting

 
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Trop Cher said:
Storyline,
How successful have you been with the creel?
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Not very with that one (5th generation) with just a few brown crabs but quite a lot of velvets. Usually though an interesting assortment of green & hermit crabs, starfish etc. The first pot we had was much better with lobsters (rare) but lots of brown crabs. My Christmas present this year is a nice new one from GaelForce.

See recent thread : http://www.ybw.com/forums/showthread.php?403799-Folding-lobster-pot&highlight=Lobster+pot
 
Trop Cher said:
Thanks for that, I'll get one from Gaelforce next time I'm in.
I get presents like that as well!
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Get in touch with Fishy Inverness from here as the 'proper' pots they do are made in batches so best to reserve one with him . They do one which is the same as the pro boys use but without the extra reinforcement. They have the entrances that I reckon are best. Don't bother with the yachty types they also sell - waste of time laying them imo.
 
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