frond_wonderland wrote:
There are a variety of good anchoring systems to choose from and which you choose will depend on your specific purpose in mind (e.g., fishing, diving, or overnight). We anchor overnight regularly off the various Channel Islands (Santa Cruz, Anacapa, Santa Rosa, and Santa Catalina). We use a two anchor system. One is a Fortress Guardian G-7 Anchor and the other is a SeaSense Anchor #13 Slip Ring. The Fortress has 12 feet of chain on it while the SeaSense Anchor has 6 feet of chain. Each anchor has a Scotty Anchor Pulley and a corresponding hand spool for rapid retrieval with 200-300 feet of rode. We avoid beaching the boat for many reasons and dinghy in on a small 50 lb inflatable. We do not have the luxury of not worrying about our boat floating off when we are 30-40 miles from the mainland on the backside of the various islands. When we do not want to bring a dinghy, we use a haul-out pulley system (similar to anchor buddy but for rougher saltwater conditions outside of bays) that allows us to pull the boat up outside the surf and unload onto the beach (and then haul it back out to where the anchor is from the beach). None of these systems are small or compact and each requires significant understanding of how anchoring systems work (e.g., is your anchor set well enough, do you have enough scope out, what are the prevailing conditions and how will they change).
I do like both your systems and did consider the Scotty, but for my applications it seemed like it would get in my way. It would of course alleviate any need for an anchor trolley. I considered the anchor trolley to be less "clutter" than the Scotty.
I had to Google the Anchor Buddy. Again, in my situation with warm water, shallow, not too rough it is easier to anchor off and wade ashore or beach it. Doing it this way I only need 1 anchor. I can run a stern anchor and tie off my bow rope to the shore.
I'm mainly looking at the anchor trolley in situations where I like to kick back, do a little bait fishing, and listen to some quiet tunes. In this case I like to anchor from the bow and I sail from the rear.
Thanks for your post. I enjoy getting different perspectives and this forum is a continual source of knowledge.
Cheers,
John