Five Easy Steps To Anchor Any Boat

How do you set and secure your anchor properly for safe boating?

Proper anchoring is more than just tossing the anchor over the side — you need to pay out enough scope (rode), let the anchor dig in, test the set, and be ready to reset if it drags. By approaching the spot into wind/current, letting out 7–10 × the water depth before cleating, testing with reverse, and checking again, you greatly increase holding power and reduce dragging while cruising or overnighting

    Anchoring your boat is easy, but if you don't follow basic rules, your pride and joy will float away.

Take a look below at # 1, when you lower your anchor, it will just be sitting there on the bottom, and that's not good enough for anything but the calmest most temporary of visits. To be secure, the anchor must be set by pulling it (blue arrow) sideways,  # 2 with a little tugging by your boat, the points will dig in, creating a strong temporary home for your boat, # 3 & 4.

       There can be an endless discussion about anchor types and anchoring techniques but for now, lets just help first timers get hooked.

Notice in the drawing below, the anchor line (rode) is laying on the bottom.  When this vessel pulls on the rode it will dig the points in and stay put.  If the rode were shorter, say almost straight up, any pulling would lift the anchor right out and you would be set free to drag somewhere bad. (rocks, or into another boat) So it is obvious that the longer the rode is, the better your anchor will set and stay set.

  

Drawing courtesy of West Marine

Okay, you have the basics, lets talk through what you do to anchor that monster. 

How many Anchors do you need for cruising in the San Juan Islands when Visiting the Marine Parks?

      The quick and easy answer is, "You need the same amount anywhere you go."    

No help so far, okay, let's talk about a scenario that could be any of us.

You arrive at your first night's anchorage, a quiet little protected bay with a rocky bottom.

What a great vacation, hot dogs over a campfire onshore, some wine or beer, a really restful night's sleep, rich coffee in the morning, and then when you try to raise the anchor, your hooked to the biggest rock in the world. After hours of pulling from all directions, you finally give up and cut the line, ouch, 250 bucks worth of anchor and rode, gone.  Oh well, you're not going to let a lost anchor spoil a perfect vacation and off you go to the next idyllic spot in the San Juan's.
Now it really hits home, the dock is full, no one offers to or wants to raft your boat.  So you think, that's okay, I'll just go ashore in the dinghy, find an anchor-shaped rock, bring it back to the mother ship, and tie it to what's left of the cut rode. Except the rode is too short, and you need to stay on board to keep circling in the boat because no one in your crew (wife and children) is qualified to run the boat while you're rock hunting.  So your current ex-spouse rows to shore, and .... see where this is going?

What should happen is you break out a spare anchor and rode that's stored and ready to deploy once you tie off the bitter end.

  Your admiring first spouse and children think you're a hero.

OK, dinghy scenario.  Your youngest children who have just mastered rowing are off somewhere nearby while you snooze or read a book.  Little do you know, but they just lost both oars, and the wind is quickly
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