Anchoring

You drop your anchor in settled weather in a beautiful bounty bay, and in the middle of the night the wind shifts, a swell of 1 meter enters the bay, and there you are: rolling from port to starboard and back and back and back... you lie in your bed wide awake, you don't want to get out because it's cold and dark and the deck is slippery... but you HAVE TO and you know it, you have to do something about it and in the worst case you have to move to somewhere else.
But anchoring can be nice as well (and cheap), as long as you are in a safe place.

Our anchor gear:
- Delta 44 lb (20 kg) 
- Fortress 15 lb (6.8 kg) aluminium, equivalent of ca 20 kg steel 
- Fisherman's anchor 20 kg
- Brittany 10 kg
- Danforth 5 kg (for the dinghy)
- Paratech sea anchor diameter 15', with 110 m of line

- 50 m of chain (10 mm) for the main anchor via the anchor winch
- 12 m of chain (8 mm) and 35 m of line (16 mm) for a 2nd anchor
- 20 m of chain (8 mm) also for a 2nd anchor
- 100 m of nylon line
- 2 anchor weights of 10 kg each, to be lowered along the chain to keep the chain on the sea bottom
- stretch line of 10 m, double so it can be mounted on both boulders on the bow; with a hook in order to release tension off the chain, bow and anchor winch

When do we use which anchor?
Sand and mud: Delta
Sand and weed: Delta or Fortress
Rocks: fisherman's anchor
In tidal waters and with no room to swing: main anchor (Delta or Fortress) over the bow and Brittany or Fortress over the stern
At sea to wait for a storm to pass: parachute anchor

The further southerly we sailed, the more we lost faith in our CQR. It did not dig in well in hard sand. So we replaced it for a Delta 20 kg and we use the Fortress as our 2nd anchor. 

Anchor buoy yes or no?
An anchor buoy on a trip line with the length of the water depth, is practical to mark the anchor. 
But sometimes an anchor buoy can be a nuisance, such as that day in the Golfe de Morbihan (France). There is a lot of current there and a dolphin was playing with for almost an hour, rubbing his body against our boat and against our dinghy and feeling happy. Suddenly he discovered a new toy: a white ball was floating around, great thing to play with! But it was tied to a rope (attached to our anchor) and the dolphin got stuck in it. First he got the rope 3 times around his neck, later several times around his tail. "Wheep, wheep", he cried for help and we helped him out. It was remarkable: how a wild animal, many times stronger than we, got panicked and how we could soothe him in a few seconds, telling him what to do and what we were going to do to help him; and how he accepted our help.

Updated 05/2005
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