anchors ready to deploy. In fact, both of my bow anchors are on their own separate windless. I'll admit that this might be over kill for most people but I've had two lower back operations so I'm done lifting anchors. The fact remains though, getting an anchor out of a locker and ready to deploy takes time and sometimes time is what you don't have much of. So you run onto a sand bar and the tide is falling. You have minutes to launch the dinghy, load up the anchor, get it out to deep water, get back and begin the process of working yourself off of the bar. What would rather do. Dig through a locker or drop the anchor off the roller at the bow into the dinghy? It could be the difference between spending the night on your side with a, shell we say, less then happy wife, waiting for the next tide or barbequing the steak you brought along with a sundowner in your hand. I ran aground twice and had to kedge off twice in an hour trying to get into the lagoon at Bara De Navidad. I felt bad but not as bad as the guy who spent the night on his side. He was so embarrassed he just left as soon as he floated. Can you imagine sitting on your side all day long with about 50 other cruisers running up and down the channel all day going back and forth to town? All kidding aside, keep dem anchors ready!

We developed a way for Denny and I to bow and stern anchor Brendon without using the dinghy or anchoring off of the stern. Normally when we are traveling and doing crossings the dinghy is stored on deck but for coastal stuff we'll leave it on the davits. That means that when we come into an anchorage the dinghy is in the way if we were to want to deploy an anchor off the stern. My feeling that a "lunch hook" for a stern anchor is a mistake and has no room on a cruising boat. If you're going to put an anchor down, put an anchor down and not some toy. Any anchor should be capable of holding the boat in a wind shift and if that happens with a lunch hook you're screwed. So why bother? Back to the point. When we pull into an anchorage we decide where we want the bow anchor is to be set and then head for the spot where we can put the stern anchor to have enough scope and be into the wind for aligning to the proper location of the bow anchor spot. We drop the port anchor off of the bow and begin backing up towards the bow anchor spot. When I'm about half way there I turn the boat around while Denny takes the nylon anchor rode and walks it down the port side of the boat. Prior to walking back aft she has attached a snatch block to the anchor line that had a 4 foot length of line attached to it. She just drags the snatch block back to the stern as I'm spinning the boat. Once she gets back aft she attaches the snatch block to the port stern cleat and walks back forward to let out more port anchor line as I continue to power forward to where we will drop the starboard bow anchor. Now the port anchor line is running back down the side of the boat aft through the snatch block at the stern towards the port anchor which is now the stern anchor. Denny continues to let out stern line until we reach the point where we want to drop the bow anchor. She reaches over and lets go the bow anchor and starts retrieving the stern. She lets a bit of bow out and takes in a bit of stern. Lets out some bow and takes in some stern. She continues to do this until we end up in the center of our anchors and then we set each anchor again. We have a 44 pound Bruce with 3/8 chain on the starboard bow roller and we have either a 45 pound Delta or a 22H Danforth with 100 feet of 5/16 chain on the port roller. It's not like you can gather up the stern anchor in a bag and run it out in the dinghy so we had to come up with a better way. We can deploy the port anchor, which has the nylon road, from the dinghy as well but we use a different method then most people for that also.

Anchoring can be stressful as hell or a really fun part on any cruise. Having a thought out plan with the right equipment ready to go can make all the difference in the world. I see it happen all the time. A family will head into an anchorage and right up to a hole in the boats drop their anchor. Then only to realize that it's slack tide and the guy next to them is on all nylon and he just dropped 150 feet of chain. Three of the boats are full keel, he's got a power boat with a flying bridge off his port side and a catamaran off his starboard and two fin keel boat in front. His hole is non existent. Take a few passes around the anchorage and look at the tide and wind, the ground tackle being used and the types of boat you'll be among. Try to picture where these boats are going to end up when the afternoon wind kicks in. Try to get a handle on the swing for each boat and where the real holes will be. Do all of this prior to dropping your anchor because it pays off. No one will nail it every time. You'll end up to close to someone once in a while but be the gentleman and move. That guy deserves a good night sleep and he won't get it with you anchored on top of him. I try to anchor so that I'm not directly in front of anyone in the afternoon winds. If your going to drag it going to be in the afternoon winds, usually. I try to anticipate where I'll be sitting so if I drag it will be past someone and not into them. That's not always possible but it doesn't hurt to try. I've only drug anchor a couple of times but I try to keep this thought in my head every time I anchor. "There is no guarantee that your home will be in the same place you left it in the morning when you wake up." Because of that, I pay as much attention as I can when it comes to anchoring Brendon.