and I'm going to give it a try. You've pretty much got it. I use a snap which is connected to my anchor chain and fixed in place. I consider my stern anchor an anchoring "system" because I can mix and match for what ever the situation calls for. (1) I remove the nylon and just connect the painter (which has an old life harness clip on the end) to the chain. (2) I use the nylon with the chain for deepet water. (3) I put the shock cord between the xhain and the nylon for docking or anchoring off shore. You need an exceptionally long painter when anchoring off shore for retrieveal. For docking I drop the anchor over the stern as I'm approaching the dock pretty far off. Once I'm at the dock and tied off I pull in the stern anchor to get it tight enough to work right. Sometimes that means pulling it in all the way to the shock cord depending on how good your estamate was when dropping the anchor. Then I climb to the front of the dinghy, pull it up to the dock and exit over the bow or along side. Once I'm out I let the painter go and the dinghy retracts itself back out the length of your painter. I have two loop/eyes whipped into both ends of the shock cord for the snaps and I coil the cord like a hose and store it out of the sun in a bag but I'm going to give the cover a try.