DIY Anchor

Well I really wish you well! As you will have gathered, I am a hopeless case for building or repairing anything, always have to resort to buying or paying for someone else, so I admire anyone with the ability to undertake DIY. But I must admit that this particular venture isn't at the top of my envy list!!!

Rob

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Well I tried my anchor last night. I deployed it initially in 15M depth with 50M of warp usung 2 cans of Fosters also filled with concrete attached at 2m and 5m from the anchor instead of chain. Initially the anchor seemed to glide through the water but the addition of a further 50M of warp appeared to solve the problem. There was however a serious snatching problem so I deployed a further 20M of bungee. This appeared to solve the problem. All was well and even if I did not have a restful night( it was quite noisy with a lot of helicopter activity initially) , I felt relatively secure with the wash boards in and all hatches securely shut. When the tide turned, the bungee wrapped itself round the boat several times but I just waited and sure enough I unspun rapidly.

Test Conclusion:- The addition of bungee would appear to make the deployment of a wooden anchor a feasible proposition.

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I made a dinghy anchor when I was about 13 in metal work at school -- was essentially steel plate, cut to the shape of a maple leaf more or less, then bend the leaves a little and weld on an L shaped stock.

Getting it to dig in involved a wee bit of experimenting, and attaching lead to various points to make it bite.

It worked very well, except we didn't have galvanising facility so needed re-painting pretty much after each use.

It last me about 6 years and went with the boat when I sold it, though was looking fairly corrded by that point.

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Glad you made it back OK. Sounds like other pre-requisites for success include drinking fosters, carrying a bag of ready-mix and having stowage for miles of bungee-cord!

Why don't you contact PBO/YM with this serious idea - I'm sure they'd love to do a piece on this for the next issue involving anchor-tests. I'd love to read their assessment of it too, surely a serious advance in modern boating techniques!!!

Nice one.
R

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