breaking out anchor under sail

You are so right. Weighing anchor, picking up a mooring, and coming alongside, all under sail, should be part of everyone's repertoire. One of my treasured memories is of weighing anchor at the Deben rocks under sail, and sailing out of the river and up to our mooring at Maylandsea without touching the engine, something that I have never been able to repeat.

I used to make a point of doing that, in the boat pictured in 35 and 39 above. This was partly because whilst “new engine” was always on the To Do list, the boat always managed to spend the money on something else!
 
The use of sail is of course an art to be learnt ....

My boat seized its engine and I had to get from Folly Inn (IoW) bow pointing upriver and boat between two rafts of 3 up ! Had to get back to Hayling Yacht Co. on mainland which has a bit of a windy channel up to the pontoons ...

Geting of the pontoon at Folly was interesting ... luckily I had a guy with me who could sail but also understood to do exactly as I asked .. Genny backed and a spring leading fwd from stern got bow out and stopped her dropping back onto boats behind. Turned and of down river ...
Next was Chain Ferry and a Folkboat playing silly b's in front of me ... so a scoot up to bow and called out to him that I was without engine ... we tacked to slow down to gauge best moment to pass Chain Ferry ... and it was then get across Solent and beat the tide for Chichester entrance.
Got to channel start for HYCo and my mate asked if he could try take her up ... Ok guy - she's all yours ... and he made a fatal error on my boat ... he tried with the mainsail ... onto the mud we went ...
What to do ? Another boat MacGregor 26 tried giving us a tow but his boat just slipped and slid all over the water ... never seen such a bad boat for 'bite' in the water ! Anyway - got them to take my guy and the two ladies ashore while I sat on my boat pondering what to do. Called HYCo but it was out of hours and no way they could get to me.

So ranged a decent amount of anchor chain on deck .... threw out anchor as best I could in direction of the real channel ... and pulled !! started to get bow moving .... run back and unfurled genny about 3/4 ... to keep her going ... hauled in anchor till hanging in water ... by now she'd stopped again. Throw out anchor ... pull ... repeat ...

So by alternating Genny and anchor - I managed to get her off the mud and back into the channel ... now to get her through the moorings and doglegs back to pontoon.

I made it all way up but decided not to try getting deep into the pontoons for my usual berth .. so went for the working outer berth .... instead of trying to sail onto it .. wind was awful direction and swinging about ... I decided to anchor just off from it ... row ashore with line ... make fast on pontoon and then back to boat. Up anchor genny already furled ... I then used the line to pull her alongside ....

Tied up ... called my mate and asked him if he wanted to return to collect his gear !!

I could have done it with him ... but I think many people understand that sometimes being alone - can be advantage especially whe it would be hard to describe actions which are basically decided as you go !! I did feel rather pleased with myself !!
 
The biggest improvement I made to anchor recovery was moving from a steel anchor to a Fortress, it makes recovering the last bit of chain, and getting the anchor to a safe place much quicker.

Please excuse my ignorance. I understand that the Fortress is an alloy anchor, but did it really make that much difference, or was it just the weight at the end of the rode?

I sail in and around the Solent where the tide changes direction about every 6 hours. I am paranoid about the anchor not re-setting upon the change of the tide. Does the Fortress re-set itself reliably? My only experience with this type of anchor is with small Danforths that I never trusted to re-set themselves.
 
When I sailed in an engineless sloop I set the main and had the jib ready to raise,then start pulling in chain etc Till up and down at this point you need to see what tack you might be on and proximity to other boats etc,make fast anchour chain and go back to the cockpit and begin to sail the boat it ought to pull the anchour out and you can sail into deeper water,go forward and pull up anchour
 
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