Glen-L.com

We were up at the lake over Thanksgiving and I was organizing some of my boating gear and there was my Digger Anchor. It is a great anchor, but I'm not sure it's the right anchor for the Malahini. When used with a large boat like a pontoon, it digs in and holds. It takes a LOT of wind to break it loose. It just seems like overkill and could do some serious damage to the hull or deck of the Malahini. What kind of anchor do you folks use for your woodies?

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2011 MALAHINI - KICKED IN THE HEAD

I wake up with a 16ft woody every morning
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=534DBtp1Cnc
Website: https://sites.google.com/site/2011malahini/

I use a proper size Danforth with some chain for all my boats

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Boat building can best be defined as an endless series of
tragedies obscured by the occasional miracle, followed by a good bottle of beer.

Don't Dream Your Life, Live Your Dream

Thanks. A Danforth is very similar to my Digger. Maybe, I'll just keep it. One thing that is clear about a closed bow boat: The bow cleat is tough to reach from the cockpit. I can practice my cowboy skills and lasso it.

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2011 MALAHINI - KICKED IN THE HEAD

I wake up with a 16ft woody every morning
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=534DBtp1Cnc
Website: https://sites.google.com/site/2011malahini/

I do what you show in your picture...leave the rope connected to the cleat and let it drape into the cockpit.

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Bill

I told my wife we needed a three-car garage for my projects...she told me to ask her for permission next time before I buy a house.
http://www.unitybuild.net

How/where do you hold down your anchor in the boat? I don't have one yet as I haven't had to anchor anywhere yet.

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Bill

I told my wife we needed a three-car garage for my projects...she told me to ask her for permission next time before I buy a house.
http://www.unitybuild.net

Bill, that is a good question. I have not used the anchor yet and that is why I was wondering what others use. The Digger anchor is not huge, but is not small either. I need to create a storage box for it either up from or in one of the hatches at the stern.

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2011 MALAHINI - KICKED IN THE HEAD

I wake up with a 16ft woody every morning
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=534DBtp1Cnc
Website: https://sites.google.com/site/2011malahini/

If you have enough room to use a plastic container to store,(or make a special fit plywood box) it will keep mud,grass,etc out of the rest of the boat

_________________
Boat building can best be defined as an endless series of
tragedies obscured by the occasional miracle, followed by a good bottle of beer.

Don't Dream Your Life, Live Your Dream

http://www.wholesalemarine.com/p/K-T-A-2/

You serious boaters and river rats will laugh at my lack of a real anchor but I use this folding one. Its basically for a JetSki but I am sure some of the 3 seater 165hp jet ski's weight more than the Zip. Since we just run on small inland lakes here it suits our needs of holding us in place while eating, fishing or swimming just fine even in a pretty good breeze. It fits under the seat base for storage in its bag so it doesnt bang around on the nice Ash sole. Thats the main reason I got it. If for some reason the engine dies and it doesnt hold the worst case is we run aground on a pebble and sand bank of our local lakes and scratch some bottom paint so its not like my nights sleep or being adrift on a river depends on it in our case.

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My Zip build log...
http://www.vupilot.blogspot.com
http://picasaweb.google.com/vupilot/Chr ... O0x7SvsQE#

"Nothing screams poor craftsmanship like wrinkles in your duct tape."

Anchors is a subject I simply cannot wrap my brain around. Maybe I need help with this. But basically I never had a anchor hold a boat still in one place. I tried danforth, mushroom, buckets of bolts, lead bricks, you name it. Seems like the wave action jerks the anchor along the bottom and slowly moves with the weather. The only anchors that ever actually held my boat(s) in place, I had to:
1. scuba dive down and untangle anchor from shipwreck or,
2. just cut the anchor loose

I assume that my problems with the anchor not holding comes from what they call too short rode or scope. I just dont get it. If, they say you need a scope of 10:1 then if I want to go still fishing in 100' water then I need 1000' of line, or, rode. then they say you need 25% of the rode is anchor chain. Well hell, that is 250 feet of chain, plus the anchor!!!!
Where are you supposed to put all this stuff anyway, I couldnt stack all this crap in my pickup truck!!! not to mention the bow of the boat. Seems it would be as easy to just take the truck with you and chuck the truck overboard with a line on it. It would hold just as good as a anchor anyway.

Here you go, I got one for you, its called the 'Storm Anchor'. Is that a oxymoron or what? The biggest & baddest anchor you can imagine along with a extra heavy rode, with extra length, plus extra chain. The boat is overweight already with all the anchor in it before you add fuel, people, beer or fishing poles.
What is it that I dont understand about anchors?

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God Bless our Troops; especially our Snipers

I used to have a 25 foot keeper, and we used a danforth on that without ever dragging that I can recall. We had about 40 ft of chain, and always paid enough warp out so that the chain was all lying on the bottom. However I don't think we ever anchored in more than about 120 ft.

If I was by myself or the weather looked dodgy we sometimes rowed out in the dingy and set a second danforth about 30 degrees off from the first. Slept better that way.

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Building a Monaco....provisionally called "Serenity"
http://glen-l-monaco.blogspot.com/

When my family first started boating I was 14 or so. We had a 20 ft homebuilt cabin cruiser. Dont know the builder and I cant find any pictures. My father took us out to lake Michigan to "camp" out overnight and we of course anchored not to far from the pier near St. Joseph, MI. About 4 in the morning we woke up to some pretty good wave action. When we anchored we just dropped the anchor and line over the side until it touched the bottom and tied it to the boat. We drifted about 20 miles out into the lake during the night. That was a scary trip back to the pier. My father decided we needed to take some courses at the Power Squadron after that. Anchors work but for deep water you need a sea anchor. Ken is right you need 10:1 rode for an anchor to hold on the bottom.

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John Amundsen
Monte Carlo
Winter Haven, FL

Maybe it will be done by G6 and maybe not.

One of the reasons I used a digger on the pontoon boat was that fact that it does not require a chain. It digs in and when you are ready to go, you give the rode a jerk and the digger cleats release and the anchor pulls up and cleans itself. In the wind, with the bimini up, the pontoon boat may as well be a sail boat and the Digger works great on our lake in the wind, but I don't know about 1ooft + It is probably more than I need for the Malahini, but I'll just keep it and make a storage box for it.
http://www.diggeranchor.com/

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2011 MALAHINI - KICKED IN THE HEAD

I wake up with a 16ft woody every morning
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=534DBtp1Cnc
Website: https://sites.google.com/site/2011malahini/

One of the better anchors I've used is a 'rock' anchor, or a 're-bar' anchor. Take approx 2' of 2" dia steel shafting and weld 1/2" rebar grappling hooks on one end. weld a eye on the other end. chuck it overboard and it obviously lays flat and the hooks grab whatever is on bottom pretty well. the best part is that if it does get stuck into the rocks, or, shipwreck, you can motor it until you straighten out the rebar hooks and frees itself.
Get a danforth hung in the rocks and you gonna lose a anchor.

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God Bless our Troops; especially our Snipers

Loosing anchors is a thing of the past since I learned a trick to rigging them. I prefer a claw type myself and rig it with the chain hooked at the "wrong" end and tied to the stem with plastic ties. It still holds the boat even in strong current and/or tide yet it is possible to break in the event you lodge the claw in a rock. Then after the ties break you are pulling it up backwards

Works like a charm. As to scope, I use an old standard taught to me by a guy who has spent his entire life working boats off the east coast from NC down to the Bahamas and occasionally further out that than. He said to use 1-1/2 to 2 times the boat length in chain. For 1 20ft boat that's 30-40ft of chain. Then enough line to anchor in whatever water you'll be in with a 7:1 scope. So for anchoring tight in 50ft of water I have 350ft of 1/2 line and 30ft of 5/16 chain. It don't slip a bit. If the water is deeper than that I don't really need an anchor, just a drift sock properly set to keep me facing the wind and I'll be fine through the night.

On inland lakes with no tide or current you can get away with much less.

Oh yeah, here's a picture of the way I set my anchor with the ties:

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I Peter 2:17