How do you choose an anchorage? At first, it seems an easy question, but experienced boaters will tell you that it’s one of the most complex skills you’ll have to learn during your first year of cruising.
Day boaters seldom anchor; if they do, it’s for a “lunch hook” and not for sound sleep or to shelter from severe weather. Boaters that favor marina stays tend to have rusty anchoring skills. It’s one of those skills that requires doing a lot before you feel entirely comfortable.
Practice makes perfect, so they say. Unfortunately, because there’s little formal education in boating, many boaters practice imperfect techniques and get lucky — until their bag of luck runs out. For this reason, you’ll find boaters with very different ideas and techniques when it comes to anchoring.
We’ve been anchoring our boat every day, eight to ten months a year, for the last ten years. We’ve had a handful of anchor-dragging incidents and a few close calls, plus many sleepless nights in rough, unprotected anchorages. All that that has made us realize that we can always do better. Here’s a guide for new boaters on how to pick and anchorage and stay comfortable and safe, no matter your goal.
How Do You Choose an Anchorage? Five Steps for Comfortable Anchoring
Quite a few of these steps (everything until steps four and five!) are done before you even get to the anchorage. Planning a safe anchorage requires, well, planning!
That means thinking about it beforehand, probably before you set out for the day. The anchorage is your destination, and you should never leave the dock or a safe anchorage until you have a plan for where your destination is (and a backup, alternate plan, too). You do not want to be cramming for this exam while you circle a crowded anchorage, unable to find a safe spot to anchor while a squall-line thunderstorm zeroes in.
Boaters must exercise workload management. When you’re bored, you should be doing something like researching anchorages. When you’re driving the boat, you should be driving the boat.
Step 1 — Consider Your Goals
What factors should be considered when selecting an anchorage?
First and foremost, you are probably anchoring for some purpose. Maybe it’s to get out of the weather and “hole up,” or perhaps to get to town to buy groceries. Maybe it’s the scenery of a quiet cove all to yourself, or possibly it’s to be as safe as possible for a big storm system roaring through. Maybe it’s to visit the reef for some snorkeling, or perhaps it’s just a convenient place to stop for the night to grab some sleep.
Whatever your reasons are, you should keep them in mind and find the right spot.
Step 2 — Know the Forecast
While cruising, ninety-nine percent of the time, you’ll pick your anchorage as a place to spend the night. That means your priority is usually calm conditions for a peaceful night’s sleep. No one, no matter the size of boat, likes to be rocked around all night in waves or swell, or swinging back and forth in exposed winds. It’s unavoidable sometimes, but we all want to avoid it if possible.
So you start your search for the perfect anchorage by looking for places in the lee of land. That is when some amount of land is between you and the direction the wind is coming from. The taller the land, the more protection it gives.
The closer you get to the land, the more protection you’ll get from wind-driven waves. Ideally, you’ll want to get as close to the land as your draft allows. In shallow areas and deep draft vessels, you might wind up a quarter mile or more from shore. This means the wind has a quarter mile or more of fetch, and waves will build up. It will be better than in open water, but finding a spot to get closer to shore will be more comfortable.
To determine which spot of land will provide you with a sheltered anchorage, you must be savvy with the weather. You need to know which direction the wind is blowing from and how confident the forecast is that it really will blow from that direction. If there is uncertainty in the forecast, you need to seek an anchorage that gives protection from all possible wind directions, not just the direction it’s most likely going to blow. This is very important because you probably won’t know that the forecast was wrong until 2:00 am, and that’s a very terrible (and dangerous) time to try to move to another anchorage.
Finally, you need to have some level of planning for the tides and currents. What is the state of the tide when you plan to arrive, and how much will it go up and down over your stay? You need to know how much lower it gets so you don’t inadvertently wind up aground at low tide. And you need to know how much higher it gets so you don’t accidentally put out too little anchor chain or line — a common problem that leads to dragging anchor.
Step 3 — Study the Chart
With your purpose and the weather in mind, it’s time to break out the chart and find that ideal spot. On the East Coast, we have two favorite sources for finding known anchorages: Waterway Guide and Active Captain. Both have pluses and minus. Both put their information on our favorite boating app, Aquamap. Active Captain is also available on Navionics, while Waterway Guide can be viewed directly on their website.
Waterway Guide is generally the more reliable of the two. The company reviews all submissions and reviews, asks reviewers questions to clarify information, and double-checks information from official sources. This little bit of checking goes a long way toward improving the accuracy and usefulness of the information and preventing repeats and errors.
Active Captain generally has more data available, but much of it is of questionable quality and usefulness. It’s true crowd-sourced data, and just because an anchorage is shown on the map does not make it an appropriate anchorage.
In areas like The Bahamas, charts may include anchorage symbols to give you some ideas. Sometimes, they correspond to a chart note indicating the level of protection and type of holding ground. They’re just suggestions, however, and the lack of an anchorage symbol does not necessarily negate an area’s use as an anchorage.
All of these sources of information are just recommendations — technically, you can anchor nearly anywhere you want with a few critical considerations. Always consult your chart to ensure you’re not running afoul of these must-check items.
- Never anchor in the middle of a channel. It may be apparent when the channel is well-marked, such as along the ICW. However, many channels are just direct routes between heavily trafficked points, like the exit channel for a marina and the ICW. Perhaps there are no markers, but it’s still a channel and makes a poor anchorage. Not only do you risk being run down by inattentive boaters, but you are likely to spend your day and night getting waked by inconsiderate ones.
- Look for and ensure there are no charted cable areas. In the US, cable areas are marked in zones on the chart, not as individual cables. We’ve seen countless boats anchor right in the middle of the zone, wrongly believing they were safely anchored between two separate underwater cables. On Bahamas Explorer charts, cables are charted individually, but the positions are approximate.
- Look at the chart for what type of holding ground to expect, and pick an anchor that works well for it. If it’s marked as grass or weeds, it’s better to find somewhere else to anchor — no type of anchor holds reliably in grass or weed, and (what’s worse) many anchors grab and make you think they’re holding when they might let go at the slightest wind shift.
- Review your cruising guides for information about good spots, shore access, and holding. If you look for it, there is much more information out there than apps and websites.
Step 4 — Arrive and Pick Your Spot
After the research, the time will come when you’re pulling into your real-life spot.
The first challenge you are likely to have is that you pull in to find a group of boats all sitting precisely in the spot you had picked out. It’s particularly common if you picked one of those charter Active Captain or Waterway Guide anchorages! Arriving at your spot early in the day helps, but that’s not often possible and doesn’t always solve the problem.
Remember to give your fellow boaters a measure of courtesy; there’s no reason to anchor right next to another boat if the anchorage stretches miles in every direction. Space yourself so that other boaters have their privacy — if we wanted to be cheek-to-jowl, we’d be parked in a marina, after all.
Keep an eye out for fishing gear, also. Just because it’s a popular anchorage doesn’t stop local watermen from stringing nets through the area and dropping pots.
In tight anchorages, you will have to cozy up to one another. This becomes tricky to figure out, especially when you first start cruising. How close is too close? You need to consider how much chain you’ll put out and, therefore, how much other boaters will likely have out. With this in mind, you should have a rough idea of how far away you must be from other boats.
Still, knowing you need to give them 150 feet or more is one thing. Being able to measure that accurately is another thing entirely. We turn on our radar to measure distances, but other people use golfing rangefinders. With more experience, you’ll likely be able to nail it without electronic help. But it isn’t easy when you first start.
You must visualize how boats will swing on their anchors. Your boat should swing with them, which keeps the spacing more or less even. However, some boats swing very differently than others, especially when the wind and currents oppose one another. In areas with current, boats need to spread out because they will swing unpredictably. Motor yachts generally swing differently than trawlers and monohull sailboats swing differently than catamarans.
Finally, keep a wary eye out for any boats sitting on moorings or two anchors. A boat on one anchor will swing in a 360º circle, while these boats may remain almost stationary. Don’t anchor next to these boats in tight anchorages because you’ll wind up swinging into them if you’re not careful.
Sometimes, it takes a slow tour of the anchorage (or two or three) before we’re happy with where to drop the hook. Don’t feel obligated to charge in, pick a spot, and claim it. It’s better to approach cautiously, get a feel for the place, look at how the other boats are spaced and sitting on their anchors, and then make your choices. If other boaters feel you’re too close, pull up the anchor and try another place.
Step 5 — Ensure It’s Set
Now that you’ve got a spot you’re happy with, it’s time to exercise your skills at anchoring the boat. Securely anchoring a boat is not as simple as it may seem: When I first started, I thought you threw out the big heavy thing, let out some rope, and called it a day.
Unfortunately, I left for the day, and when I returned, my boat was not where I had left it. A strong wind had built up, and it had dragged a quarter mile downwind. Thankfully, it wasn’t aground, and it was dragging slowly. So, it really isn’t that simple.
Here’s the process we use to make sure it’s correctly set.
- Place the boat where you want it, drifting with the bow pointed into the wind (or current). When the boat comes to a complete stop, let go of the anchor. Feed out the chain/rope until it hits bottom, then wait for the boat to begin drifting downwind. Let out more chain/rope as the boat drifts. If it’s dead calm, it’s trickier. You might have to use tiny bursts of reverse.
- Let out chain/rope until you have the proper 5:1 (standard for chain), 7:1 (standard for rope), or 10:1 storm scope. To do this, you must know how deep it will be here at high tide (not the current tide). You also need to know (not guess, not estimate: know) how much chain/rope you’re letting out — it must be measured and marked in advance (some boats have fancy chain counters, a nice toy to have but costly and overly complex).
- Once you’ve got the right amount of scope out, attach your snubber or bridle via chain hook or tie off the line. Let the boat fall back and tug at the anchor. With enough wind, the boat will likely stop and point into the wind. Don’t rush the process; give the anchor time to settle in mud and the anchor line time to straighten out.
- Now, put the engine in reverse. This will stretch the anchor chain or rope and force the anchor to dig in and set. Watch the line. If it’s bouncing or skipping, the anchor isn’t setting for some reason (e.g., rocky or thick grass). You’ll have to try a different spot if it doesn’t set within a few seconds.
- Once the line is taut and the boat is stationary, increase power in reverse. We usually go for 1500 to 2000 RPM on our little sailboat diesel — a slow cruise amount of power. Let it pull on the anchor and really dig it in for about 30 to 60 seconds, all the while watching the GPS speed (0.0 kts, hopefully). At the same time, watch objects around you to make ranges. Say, a channel marker and the house on the shore beyond. If the two remain stationary relative to each other, you aren’t moving. If you see the marker moving in relation to its background, you are moving, and the anchor isn’t set.
- Once you’re sure the anchor is dug in, shut down the engine and prepare your anchor’s down cocktail of choice. I like to stay aboard for a while after anchoring, just to watch how the boat sits in the wind and current and to ensure I didn’t accidentally get too close to any other boaters.
Anchorages: Further Reading and Additional Resources
Waterway Guide: Tips for Picking an Anchorage
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