As scuba divers diving mostly in the keys we found it really necessary to have a really good anchor system. We used to try to use dual grappling anchors and more than once our boat drifted away from us and we had to chase it down.
When diving and snorkeling we often raise and lower the anchor sometimes a half dozen times during the day. Storing the anchor inside any enclosed hatches out in open ocean is pretty impossible (you can't really open any hatches while out there), just sayin.
The automatic anchor system we came up with is really handy for us, and is a tremendous space saver with the anchor suspended over the stern of the boat it is completely out of the way, and more importantly we are not scratching and dinging the plastic boat everytime we touch it.
Here is a pic of the anchor system:
In reality the design is as simple as it gets, it's just a 1/8 x 2 x 10" piece of aluminum bent over the rear hull area (just bent by hand to fit), then held down by four small loops of 700 lbs test spectra string, there is a piece of rubber shelf liner underneath to prevent it from scratching the boat. The 3 ft long 3/4 sq aluminum I picked up at home depot.
The anchor is never removed from the boat, it just hangs behind the boat suspended when trailering or stored in the garage, up to 150ft of 3/8" anchor line coils up on the paper towel holder like reel system added to the pvc motor mount (took all of 15 minutes to make, and really manages the anchor line nicely), I don't know if anyone else has noticed, but if you pay out 150 ft of anchor line on the deck it completely fills up the rear passenger compartment and it tangles up into literally everything (when I do that I feel like captain Ahab on Mobie dick all tangled up in lines).
When using the anchor I just tie the anchor to the rear AKA with a slip knot, and can deploy and retrieve the anchor from the front seat very easily (usually piling the excess anchor line on one of the tramps until we position to our next stop.
I'm sure a cooper anchor would work just as well as our guardian G7 anchor (in the keys we need sand type anchors). Notice I have no big ole chain rode on my anchor, we have used it many times and found we don't need a chain at all (but we do have to have the anchor at a little shallower angle (I forget what that's called). As divers the first thing we always do is dive down following the anchor line, then check the anchor set on the bottom, it always seems to set nicely. Then when we come back up we do our safety decompression stops hanging onto the anchor line (normally what everyone does), if you don't hang on to something the current can carry you away while decompressing. When diving on protected reefs (no anchors allowed) we hook up to the mooring balls, and have what we call a dangle line (25 ft or so long) trailing behind the boat to catch stragglers, and sometimes a weighted decompression line to hang onto (our dive computers tell us what to do and how long, we have to hold and stay still (which can be really difficult in current).
None of this crap likely applies to anyone else, I'm just posting because we found the anchor system to be the most trouble/hassle free system we have used (and we have tried many different systems).
And yes we use the system to anchor just offshore in surf and at sand bars. We also sometimes drop the anchor just outside the surf zone, and reel ourselves in and back out thru the surf. The down side to that though is if your done for the day somebody has to swim back out and retrieve the stupid anchor.
Hope this helps
FE
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