l008com
Senior Chief Petty Officer
- Joined
- Jun 14, 2007
- Messages
- 730
I had an anchor thread a year or two back, but I have new specific info that will hopefully help you help me better this time around.
First, what I have is a 15' V hull bowrider, a ~1985 thundercraft. I don't fish, and I don't expect to do very much anchoring, except for one thing. I want to anchor my boat just off shore of some islands. These islands are in the ocean, so I need to anchor far enough off shore that the tide isn't going to beach my boat.
In my previous post, someone showed me these neat elastic anchor lines. So you could pull your boat to shore, then let it go and the elastic would pull back. But you need a second line with those. And you're not supposed to pull your anchor up by the elastic line, so you need a third line as well. I don't have a hell of a lot of space on my boat, plus these lines are all pretty expensive.
So I came up with an alternate method that seems simpler, and it should be easier for me to stow all the needed gear. I'd use one long line, and two anchors. I'd loop the rope through the first anchor and drop it 20 feet out or so. Then drive to shore, and pull the rope to pull the boat back out. Then tie the end of a rope to a second anchor on the beach. Then when it's time to go, I'd just do one of two things depending on the wind: If it's blowing in, i'll just untie the beach anchor and let the boat blow to shore. Or if the wind was going off shore, I'd just pull the line hard and yank the "deep" anchor to shore with the boat.
So my two main questions are: What kind / style of anchor would be best for each of these two tasks? I figure a simple cheap mushroom anchor would be fine for the beach anchor. I'm not sure what style would be good for the underwater anchor. I need something that can hold my small boat firm enough if there's a breeze or if a boat goes by and makes waves. But not an anchor that holds so strong that I can't drag the anchor up from the deep, from shore.
At this point, you're probably thinking "well it depends on what the bottom is like where you anchor". And I actually have an answer for that now, via the best boating picture I've taken in my life. It's a smooth sandy bottom with lots of loose gravel & seashells:
Question number two is, what size anchors do I need. I also have some helpful info on that. Specifically, my boat & trailer weigh 1860 pounds. I figure the trailer probably easily weighs 500 pounds, so the boat is probably around 1300 pounds. Here's a picture of the trailer to help you judge, and here's a top-down picture of my boat, because people tend to over-estimate how large the boat is from side-view pictures. It's not a large, heavy boat by any means.
So I was thinking of a "grappling" anchor for in the water, and like I said a small mushroom anchor for the beach. Or I may get some kind of pole style beach anchor for shore, depending on whichever style I think I can more easily store on the boat (space is tight).
Let me know what you think about A) the plan, B) the anchor styles and C) the weight I would want for each anchor.
I used to be better at drawing diagrams, but here's the basic theory:
First, what I have is a 15' V hull bowrider, a ~1985 thundercraft. I don't fish, and I don't expect to do very much anchoring, except for one thing. I want to anchor my boat just off shore of some islands. These islands are in the ocean, so I need to anchor far enough off shore that the tide isn't going to beach my boat.
In my previous post, someone showed me these neat elastic anchor lines. So you could pull your boat to shore, then let it go and the elastic would pull back. But you need a second line with those. And you're not supposed to pull your anchor up by the elastic line, so you need a third line as well. I don't have a hell of a lot of space on my boat, plus these lines are all pretty expensive.
So I came up with an alternate method that seems simpler, and it should be easier for me to stow all the needed gear. I'd use one long line, and two anchors. I'd loop the rope through the first anchor and drop it 20 feet out or so. Then drive to shore, and pull the rope to pull the boat back out. Then tie the end of a rope to a second anchor on the beach. Then when it's time to go, I'd just do one of two things depending on the wind: If it's blowing in, i'll just untie the beach anchor and let the boat blow to shore. Or if the wind was going off shore, I'd just pull the line hard and yank the "deep" anchor to shore with the boat.
So my two main questions are: What kind / style of anchor would be best for each of these two tasks? I figure a simple cheap mushroom anchor would be fine for the beach anchor. I'm not sure what style would be good for the underwater anchor. I need something that can hold my small boat firm enough if there's a breeze or if a boat goes by and makes waves. But not an anchor that holds so strong that I can't drag the anchor up from the deep, from shore.
At this point, you're probably thinking "well it depends on what the bottom is like where you anchor". And I actually have an answer for that now, via the best boating picture I've taken in my life. It's a smooth sandy bottom with lots of loose gravel & seashells:
Question number two is, what size anchors do I need. I also have some helpful info on that. Specifically, my boat & trailer weigh 1860 pounds. I figure the trailer probably easily weighs 500 pounds, so the boat is probably around 1300 pounds. Here's a picture of the trailer to help you judge, and here's a top-down picture of my boat, because people tend to over-estimate how large the boat is from side-view pictures. It's not a large, heavy boat by any means.
So I was thinking of a "grappling" anchor for in the water, and like I said a small mushroom anchor for the beach. Or I may get some kind of pole style beach anchor for shore, depending on whichever style I think I can more easily store on the boat (space is tight).
Let me know what you think about A) the plan, B) the anchor styles and C) the weight I would want for each anchor.
I used to be better at drawing diagrams, but here's the basic theory:
