Today was a good day, right up until the end. I made 48 miles with no problems until the very end. The good part included dolphins, manatees, open railroad bridges, and friendly boaters. The bad part was the anchoring at the end of the day.
Let me try to explain. You can’t just throw out the anchor, cleat the rode and expect the anchor to do its job. No, there is a whole procedure to properly anchor a sailboat. First you must select the proper spot and I won’t get into that because it would make a long posting on it’s own. You must deploy enough rode to maintain proper scope and the formula for normal conditions is 7 times the water depth plus your bowroller’s distance to the water. Summer Snow’s bowroller is 4 feet above the water. The water depth that I want to anchor in is about 8 ft so 12 times 7 equals 84 feet of rode.
There is a nice looking anchorage just south of downtown Daytona Beach and I see several sailboat anchored there. I turn west off the ICW and head into the anchorage. I do my usual zigzagging and circling to find just the right spot to drop the hook. Did I mention that the wind is blowing at about 18 knots? Well, I drift up into the wind to my perfect spot and, using my single handed anchoring set up, I lower the anchor and began to lay out the proper amount of rode (90 ft). This is where things start going wrong. My new “quick set” Delta anchor doesn’t set and I’m dragging backwards with the wind. DARN!! Maybe it’ll grab, maybe it’ll grab, it grabs! But now I’m too close to the boat behind me, BLAST! So I throw Summer Snow into gear and pull in the anchor rode as I creep forward. This works pretty good but I know that when I reach the chain to nylon connection I will have to go forward and help it through the bowroller. I can’t have the boat in gear when I do this so there I am on the foredeck pulling a 12 thousand pound boat into an 18 knot wind. Not so good! Also, now I have a pile of chain on the foredeck so my single handed anchor set up is not going to work again. Bummer! But I get it up.
The anchor is up and I try it again. This time I move over a bit and go up into the wind more. Now I have to go forward to deploy the anchor so I drift up into the wind and as the boat drifts to a stop I go forward and let the anchor down. I let out rode as the boat drifts back. I cleat the rode at the appropriate length; the anchor sets and I’m safely anchored. Yippee!
Back in the cockpit I check the depth meter, it’s at 7 ft. Hmmm, I wonder what the tide is at? I check it out and we are at high tide right now and the tide range is 4.04 ft! That means at low tide I will be in 3 ft of water! Yikes! I need at least 5.5 ft for Summer Snow!
Up goes the anchor again. I am so shot from pulling the boat against the wind that it takes a good half hour to get the anchor in. Once in I am heading for a marina! So here I am in the Halifax Marina for 50 bucks and ready to crash and burn!
Sounds like you anchored in about the same spot in Daytonna as we did a year ago, only we were not smart enough to move. We bumped bottom most of the night and when we took off in the early (dark) morning I promptly and firmly drove us right into the opposite side of the channel! Sounds like stormy weather on the East coast.......Neal
ReplyDeleteremember the old saying that alls well that ends well. We scraped frost off the car on Sunday and Monday morning. Now its going to rain all week. farmers were almost done planting this time the last two years so they are getting quite ancy. Enjoy reading your blog
ReplyDeleteJohn
It was snowing at 5:10 this morning. April 27 Here in Albert Lea.
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