GUEST COLUMN Anchoring more
Having a boat means peace and relaxation, even though the weather can mean stress, fear and more repairs at times. It is the getting away from the office, the computer and the everyday hubbub of working life. Sadly the mobile phone still comes to the boat – that umbilical cord to 4G just cannot be cut. But the trip out to a swinging mooring on a Friday evening after work marks the transfer from deadlines and contracts to reading in the cockpit or rafting up with friends.
I have always kept my boats on swinging moorings on the East Coast, apart from a season in Holland when we were in a marina. Go into any marina in the UK, however, and you will see hundreds of boats, sail and power, all tied up safe and sound.
We are lucky enough to have five or six rivers within a handful of hours’ sail from our mooring, most with a good local inn, as well as nine marinas, all with a pub, restaurant and chandlery. But why don’t we anchor when we are away from our mooring? We have very good anchoring tackle – a relatively new Delta anchor, 50m of chain plus 30m of rope, all new within the last few years. On top of that we had a stainless steel chute fitting made up to drop the chain into the anchor well without the need for a stick to push it away from the bottom of the gypsy. The windlass is in excellent order, with both a remote control and foot switches for ease either up or down.
I think the answer to why we don’t anchor is simply fear. Nothing hugely terrifying, just a nagging doubt that the anchor might drag. Fear that the windlass will decide to stop working at the crucial moment. And fear that we might get the depths wrong and end up falling over into a hole. It is also to do with the fact that sitting at anchor off Elbe a few years ago I had an ‘incident’. Another boat arrived fairly close to me after I had dropped anchor. Being British I did not say anything.
I did not want an argument. Instead,
I was knocked out of my bunk at 0300 when the other boat hit the stern quarter. I spent the rest of the night firstly lifting my anchor and finding an alternative spot and then keeping watch in the cockpit as I was not sure whether the anchor had set properly.
Then, of course, there’s the wonderful feeling of that stress-free evening in a marina, wandering along to the local hostelry for dinner and then topping up the water and fuel tanks before leaving in the morning that gives you a certain peace of mind.
But I am determined we will anchor more next year. We know what to do. We can work out the tidal depths. Weather forecasts are available from so many sources – phone, tablet, Navtex, radio, Coastguard – we just need to change our mindset. That’s all it is. Going into a marina berth with a Force 5 or 6 crosswind can be far trickier than simply dropping an anchor, checking it is set and then enjoying the peace we have on our mooring.
It’s time to get back to the simple days before there was a marina in almost every river, the days when you sailed until the wind died or the tide turned and then dropped the hook to enjoy the peace and sounds of the waves. Time to get back to basics.