Our boat is about 43' overall, 13' beam, 6'9" draft, 24,500 or so weight. We have a 66# spade, 66# Bruce, and a 37# Fortress for main anchor and a couple backups. Those are all considered sized up. For a stern anchor, I'm wanting as light as I can reasonably get away with both for ease of handling and practicality of mounting on the pushpit. We're headed to Mexico and mostly the Sea of Cortez. What stern anchor sizes have worked for others?

I'm not wildly enthusiastic about deploying two anchors. I have been aboard boats only a few times when we've set a stern anchor. The first time, we tucked behind the north side of Spectacle Island in Maine to avoid an expected blow. Instead, the wind came from a direction that put us broadside. The bow anchor dragged and the small danforth stern anchor let us pull ourselves off. We retrieved the main anchor somehow and abandoned the stern anchor.

On another occasion, on another boat, we developed slack in the stern line and it wedged between the skeg and the semi-balanced forward portion of the rudder. We ended up cutting the stern rode, saving most of it and the anchor, but giving up about 20 feet of rode.

We can't blame the anchors in either case, but these instances remind me that stern anchors can complicate as well as improve a situation.

A trick we haven't tried in a long time is to attach a line to the main rode via a rolling hitch and leading it back to a winch aft, thus effecting a bridle to change the angle to the anchor (and sea). In much wind and sea, that puts extra strain on the ground tackle.

Anyway, my original question again: what size for the stern anchor has worked for people?