Anchor options

[BigE]

yep i did the acnhor dance for a while - 2 sarca's 1 M'bar pick couple of reefies ..... then i went out with a mate on the GBR anhored in reef on rock and sand all with a dirty old BCF plough recons he had not lost one in 10 years , short end of the story , i now have a cheap BCF plough, 4 years next month never been stuck or lost one and never dragged.

the trick appears to be find a cheap plough that is flogged and loose in the shaft pivot point so it can twist when under strain from directly above.


BigE

[ranmar850]

The good old ploughs aren't a bad compromise. They can tend to drag along on their side on sand a bit , sometimes, until they dig in. They were all we used on the big commercial boats anchoring offshore, or close to shore, for that matter. Out to 100m or more, sand, mud, coral reef, rock...they would snag occasionally, nearly always get them back by keeping the weight on and doing circles. I never personally lost one. Having the articulation on the shank certainly helps.
I've been using a #2 Sarca now for 5 years, anchoring on all sorts, no problems. Remember that the Sarca, as opposed to the Rocna or similar, has the slit shank, so you can run forward over a snag and have the chain slide up to the front, to hopefully trip the snag by pulling forward off it. The point about the trade-off in length vs weight with chain is valid--the weight is needed to keep the shank parallel to the seabed. Having a lot of light weight chain can, as someone said above, lead to more chain tangling the bottom, either by dragging across something, or just falling into a long crevice and getting under an overhang. With a windlass type, you don't have any choice, as your chain gypsy must match a chain size. More choice with a drum setup.