Anchoring a Boat - How to use a boat anchor

how to anchor your boat the basics of boat anchoring anchoring your boat properly boat anchoring basics boat anchors for beginners learning how to use your anchor i'm not sure exactly what i should say but hi i'm wayne the boat guy and in this video we're going to talk about boat anchors and how to anchor your boat properly [Music] so the very first time my wife and i went to use our anchor we were actually right over there at that island and it was a weekend day and a lot of people were anchored up all the boats were facing the same direction they had their anchors out we thought it was pretty straightforward you pull your boat to where you want to throw your anchor out tie it off we knew about doing that and there you go you're all set sat down popped open a drink and started to enjoy the day within about 10 minutes time i noticed the boats behind me and beside me were all much closer than they were whenever i first set my anchor because i actually did not set my anchor i just dropped my anchor on the ground and that was the beginning of me figuring out that i didn't know anything about anchoring i'm going to cover some of the basics about anchoring because believe it or not there's a whole lot to know about anchoring we're just going to cover the simple stuff for somebody starting out with a recreational boat who wants to be able to use their anchor i'm not going to get into all these elaborate details about how to anchor in a deep channel upwind during a storm with all kinds of extra things or anchoring with multiple anchors or any of those types of things we're just going to talk about the simple basics of anchoring your boat so first of all let's talk about all the different kinds of anchors well there's many different kinds of anchors out there typically on a very small boat like a 12 or 14 foot boat you would use a mushroom anchor or a river anchor and this is a small anchor that you can essentially just drop over and tie off on a very small boat in calm waters that works pretty good but for recreational boats like boats like 17 feet to 30 feet a lot of times you need an anchor that actually can grab so this anchor here has lots of types of names but it's commonly referred to as a danforth anchor and these are actually a really cool anchor and you'll see them with a lot of recreational boats the nice thing about it is if you notice it can lay flat so it doesn't take up a whole lot of space it doesn't have parts sticking out vertically it can just be laid down flat and stored flat mine actually stores in a compartment where it sits just like this resting on these two arms right here this design is very cool and very simple basically the way it works when you drop it these will fall one way or the other depending on gravity and how you've dropped your anchor as you drop it down it will then lay on the bottom and as you reverse the boat these two prongs here will dig into the bottom and these two legs here will sort of keep it level on the bottom theoretically and then when you go to leave as you pull your boat forward or you start pulling up on your anchor line as you pull up on your anchor line this chain will pull this up releasing your anchor additionally ideally is that because this is on a loop this can also slide along and pull your anchor and up and out this way in case your anchor is really bid in very well into the ground and i'll show you that in a minute hey if you're liking this video so far please be sure to give it a like down below thank you so let's talk about the very basics of anchoring your boat in order to anchor your boat properly and not do what i did in my original example is you should face your boat into the wind because what will ultimately happen is if you anchor your boat the wind will steer your boat around where you are bow into the wind also the bow is typically the highest point of your boat so if there are some waves and those types of things those things will be coming to the bow of your boat and not to the stern and this is very important also you should only anchor your boat from the bow of course there are exceptions to this rule for more complicated situations but for the basics you should only be anchoring your boat from the bow so that way water does not wash over the stern of your bow to the engine and back area of your boat which is lower than your bow base your bow into the wind and you lower your anchor down now it's very important is making sure the other end of your anchor line is fastened to something on the boat so therefore you don't accidentally let all of the line out and lose your anchor completely keep track of how deep of water that you're in because when your anchor is set it will need to be at an angle in the water to be able to have the anchor gripping the bottom and holding your boat securely and that way you've got a nice angle where it's secure and holding on to the bottom of the water typically what i try to do is whenever i anchor i look at my depth finder or check my argo app and i see how deep the water is where i'm at measure out some of my line make sure i've got enough anchor line and sort of tie that spot off on the cleat and then drop it down now when the anchors drop down if you have somebody with you that person can help but you can also do this by yourself then carefully and gently put the boat in reverse and start going backwards at the slowest speed possible and ideally you'll be able to see that anchor line which is kind of dropped down start to pull out in front of the boat and once the anchor starts to grab you'll feel it because you'll start to feel some resistance with the boat going backwards and that line will get taut if you have a spotter they can be up there telling you that letting you know when the anchor seems to have set if you're by yourself you kind of have to check or be able to visualize or start to feel how the boat is reacting you need to have that anchor digging in where it's getting a good grip and then it'll hold your boat securely so let me show you how these anchors work actually how they bite into the to the to the bottom of the river because i think it's very fascinating and interesting so here we have my river anchor and my river anchor has a much shorter line because it's for my smaller boats than my other anchor and believe me i will untangle this before i put it back in my boat so basically what happens is if you drop your anchor and then as you reverse your boat this will go along and dig in now as you see the river anchor is not ideally suited just for sandy bottoms because it's a river anchor so it's designed to catch things like a growth that's under there marine growth or tree limbs things like that that might be in the bottom of the river it's not designed for sandy bottoms there are other anchors that are better suited for sandy bottoms however my experience has been for me with my 12-foot boat that just having this thing sitting on the bottom is enough to keep my little 12-foot boat from going anywhere so a lot of times i can just drop that anchor and it's going to keep my boat from going anywhere what's nice about an anchor like this is it's relatively inexpensive it's not very heavy and it's pretty easy to transport so here's me standing over the bow of my boat and typically you want to try to drop it down like this when you're when you're lowering the anchor but it's going to rotate so as you drop your anchor down i'll have it drop down the other way so we can see how that looks all right if you notice it completely just flipped over as i drag along it's biting in so once your anchor has bit into the bottom and you let out your line that chain will lay on the bottom as well and so then your boat is actually pulling from way over here and that anchor is holding fast and holding into the bottom like right now i'm actually trying to give it a good pull and we're just in the sand right here we're not in the bottom of the river the two-person way to release your anchor is to have somebody manning the anchor line and watching to see what's going on and then another person's operating the boat and slowly driving forward so while the person who's manning the anchor line undoes it from the cleat and starts to slowly bring up the line as the operator is driving the boat towards the anchor so that person who's in the bow will tell them whether to go which direction to go whether to stop as they're slowly bringing up the line as you get to the point where the line is straight down in the water and you're feeling resistance that's where you know you're straight over the anchor this is where it gets challenging depending on how well the anchor is set as you're slowly moving your boat forward you eventually get to the point where you're pulling up this chain as you're pulling up the chain it lifts up on this part of it which will release the anchor but let's say this has been in so well and there's a big tree root across here what will happen then is this will actually slide along like this to this end of the anchor and now it'll be able to by having the boat forward of the anchor it will be able to release the anchor this way so when you're by yourself and you need to be able to release your anchor the way that i do it is i actually go up to the bow and start bringing in the anchor line manually really what i'm doing then is i'm just manually pulling my boat forward slowly pull the rope and as you slowly just try to pull the rope you'll feel yourself going towards the rope so you'll feel like it's coming in but actually what you're doing is pulling your boat forward and eventually you get to the point where you are straight up and down and then give it a couple of good tugs to see if i can just yank it up if i can't yank it up on my own then i know i need to put the boat in gear and nudge it forward just a little bit i tie it back off to the cleat and once you feel the boat go forward just a little bit put it back in neutral hop back up there and try to see if you can pull that line up yesterday when my wife and i were out it actually took me two nudges forward to get it to release many anchors are set up like this one here where there is anchor line and then there is a section of chain attached to the bottom part of the anchor the reason for this chain is to allow the anchor to lay flat on the bottom to give it some weight so that it lays flat on the bottom as you're trying to set your anchor but also as you're retrieving your anchor when this chain breaks the surface of the water now you know you're getting close to getting to your anchor and that's very handy because if you're right next to the bow of the boat right next to the side you don't want that anchor banging up the side of your boat so what you're able to do is as you start to see chain you can kind of lean out a little bit farther holding the anchor a little farther away from the boat to kind of rinse it off dip off the mud or be able to pull it all the way back up into the boat [Music] so the chain serves a very functional purpose but also helps as you're trying to retrieve your anchor but what if you can't get your anchor free what if there's no way to be able to get it free you've tried everything there's other techniques where once you've tried going forward that you go back backwards again that you try to go in a circle to try to get the anchor out but let's say it's caught up on something on the bottom well i've read stuff where people are like oh make sure you have scuba gear aboard so that you can dive down to get your anchor no no thanks i'm not diving down in the bottom of the river trying to look through the muck to figure out how to get my anchor out i'd rather buy another anchor which is why it's always important on your boat to keep a knife if you have a knife on your boat you can always cut that anchor line and run if you have to obviously try to cut it as short as possible so that way it's not tangling up for anybody else and it goes back to the rest on the bottom with just this little piece of rope on it so in an emergency that is another way to do it you can cut your line but you need to have a knife on board to be able to do that [Music] there's no way i would want to untie it from the other end and put 80 feet of rope into the river to be sitting there attached to this anchor i'd much rather try to do as much as i can to get it out of the river first before cutting the line so i never realized how the claws work of that danforth type anchor and how it could be pulled out by moving the boat forward i know people had told me that but i never really understood it until i was able to visualize it and try it out for myself and so i hope this little demonstration of how that works helps you to understand whenever your anchor feels like it's stuck don't get frustrated if for some reason you're muscling it and you can't get that anchor to come up you just need to undo whatever you did to get it in there so it is possible to set your anchor by yourself it is possible to retrieve your anchor by yourself obviously all of these things are easier with an assistant and a helper but you need to properly show that assistant or help or what you want them to do whether you want them to be operating the boat or retrieving the anchor line and they need to know if you don't want that danforth type anchor swinging against the bow or your boat chipping up your gel coat you need to let them know that because if people don't know they're just going to just yank that thing right up on the bow and when you get to that anchor road the chain part of the anchor they're just going to rub that right on across there like you're some kind of merchant marine freighter ship if you have any interesting anchoring stories or anchoring problems that have happened to you please be sure to share those in the comments below i love to read those and i try to respond to every comment and if you want to do any more complicated type of anchoring like for example anchoring your boat and then having other boats raft up to your boat and any of those types of things definitely do some research to look into how to do that properly because that's a lot more complicated and you've got a lot more variables involved and a lot more weight that you're putting on that anchor the chapman piloting book and other resources devote whole chapters to a lot more about anchoring and if you're interested in learning a lot more about anchoring i suggest you purchase the chapman pyloning book and i have a link for that book in the description below as well as links for some of these other things that i have shown today if you need to get any of these accessories as an amazon associate i actually receive a very small commission for any purchases you make by using those links but it doesn't cost you anything additional that's just money that amazon gives me for promoting amazon for these particular products and please remember this video was just covering the very basic fundamentals of anchoring and how to anchor your small personal watercraft get more information refer to the chapman piloting book or other resources that you might find available to you to be able to learn a lot more about anchoring because this was just scratching the surface and as always thank you for watching this video here's another video picked just for you and a playlist of videos similar to this one you stay safe out there in the water [Music] i've got to go tidy up these anchor lines now so that way they're not a big tangled up mess [Music]

Channel: Wayne The Boat Guy

Views: 312,092

Keywords: anchoring a boat, anchoring tips, boat anchor use, how to anchor a boat, boat anchoring, how to anchor, setting an anchor, releasing an anchor, new boater tips, anchoring, danforth anchor, mushroom anchor, river anchor, river anchors for boats, river anchor vs mushroom anchor

Id: Z5Q9f5zLYoA

Length: 17min 13sec (1033 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 20 2021