The most common issue I see people have with almost any anchor is the amount of chain leader installed and rode put out. I'll see someone pull up to the sandbar and drop their fluke anchor with no chain straight down and tie it off to a cleat and wonder why it doesn't hold them when the waves kick up and the hear them complain that that style of anchor is junk.
This little $18 anchor fits nicely in the anchor locker, holds my 23' boat with no issues in the Mississippi River and everywhere else we boat. I upgraded to a larger, longer chain to assist with the holding power of an upcoming trip. In all the chain weighs 10lbs and the anchor itself only weighs 5lbs.
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So a bit of an update… before my Lake Powell trip I bought the 9# version of the slip fluke anchor and 21‘ of 3/8” gal chain. The 21’ of chain was recommended by West Marine as a rule of thumb, chain part of rode is the length of your boat. I knew I was going to NEED a good anchor system at Lake Powell, and I’d have my 5# fluke slip anchor for the beach anchor. I had also bought a pair of those screw type beach anchors which, while helpful were basically useless in the windiest conditions. Next time I will just have two 5# fluke anchors for the beach anchors.
The 3/8” chain is roughly 38# of chain, which I found out was far too much, and the galvanized chain marks the gel coat. After returning home I replaced the 3/8” gal chain with 21” of 5/16” stainless which is about half the weight.
The first time I went to set the 3/8” chain and 9# fluke anchor, I had both my arms in the anchor locker picking up this too heavy set up when my feet slipped out from under me causing my body to slam down onto the anchor locker lid, raking my right arm which caused that area of my arm to leak circulatory fluid prodigiously, and my left index finger was in between the lid and the box, how it did not get broken amazes me still as I had to open the lid to extract my finger. Once the main anchor was set I tied to fenders to the rode and would just leave it floating until I returned each day and I’d retrieve it with the boat hook I bought for this trip. The boat hook was mainly intended to hold the boat off of the canyon walls-which it did. The 5# fluke slip anchor worked perfectly for the stern. However, this was a total beawwtch to retrieve and keep the chain off of the rub rail and gel coat.
The second location we anchored at was not back in a canyon and protected, it was off of the main channel and pretty exposed. This is where the sh*t show ensued when a series of Thunderstorms came through with 40-50 mph wind gusts came. I set my boats two anchors via a Med Tie set up, bow pointing off shore, with my 5# fluke in the sand, and I had to double up on the screw in type of anchors. The houseboat showed up a couple of hours later, bow into the shore with two anchors off the bow on each corner, and two stern anchors set out at about 30* on the shore. All are giant fluke anchors. When the winds kicked up a couple of the house boat anchors started to pull loose, primary because those, not me, that dug the holes for them did not cut a small trench for the arm to lay in so the anchors were just pulling up and over on themselves. So it was kinda all hands to re do the anchor holes and get the lines brought up taught which was a challenge to say the least. I dug into my mental tool box and used some rigging techniques I had learned years ago doing line work. Using one of my long dock lines, I tied a monkey fist onto the anchor line, then a a bowline in the bite just beyond the monkey fist, ran the dock line back and around one of the 4” aluminum posts on the houseboat, then back to the bowline in the bite to double the mechanical advantage. As the house boat would swing back I was able to get a couple of hundred pounds of pull on the anchor line while my friend tied the now slack end of the anchor line onto the cleat of the houseboat. We repeated these steps on all four anchor lines and the houseboat barely moved after that. These steps were to be tested more forcefully at 0200hrs in the morning when a much more energetic wind storm came through. The house boat held fast, but the wind carried the red sand into my boat and onto the house boat, the wind also started throwing the plastic furniture on the deck of the houseboat around hitting some of my friends sleeping outside on the deck.
So when the first storm happened and the sh*t show was in progress, at one point I looked over and the stern of my boat was hitting the sand.. not good but couldn’t do anything about that while trying to keep the houseboat secure. When we had time, I had my friend help me go and reset my main anchor. Here is what I had done wrong, I let the anchor down too fast and I imagine the chain kind of piled up on the anchor. I thought I had set this anchor well but obviously did not. When my friend helped me, we pulled the anchor back up and went a bit further out from the shore, he got the anchor pretty close to the bottom and had me back up very slowly. He let the anchor down slowly so he could feel the anchor touch bottom, and then slowly let out the rode so that the chain laid out on the bottom. We continued backing up for a long ways before he tied off the rode and we backed down on the anchor and this time it held fast. When the stronger wind storm rolled in at 0200hrs and pandemonium was taking place on the house boat, my boat was simply riding out the wind storm with aplomb.
I’m glad I had got the heavier anchor and replaced the pinner piece of chain that came with my small anchor for the over kill 3/8” chain. Had I not done that I would have had to been out all night under power riding out the wind storm.
Sorry for the long winded post,, but thought I would share my learning experience with the group for others to learn from .
