My handheld GPS’ anchor alarm sounded at 4:30am. It woke me up, but I wasn’t too startled… I had set it to be pretty sensitive since I knew there would be a wind shift at some point in the night. Besides, in 9 seasons of using my Rocna anchor, we’d never dragged unexpectedly. It had held fine the previous 36 hours, enduring one 180 degree wind shift already.
I’m not a morning person, but I really don’t like the idea of ending up aground somewhere. I rolled over in my bunk and groggily checked the GPS display.
Every time we anchor I set a GPS on the boat to keep track of Priorities’ position as she lies at anchor. I set this up in addition to the audible anchor alarm. I program the position tracking feature to record our position every 30 seconds and display it on the screen as a track. Normally, as the boat swings around in small wind shifts, an arc will eventually be “drawn” on the display. When the winds shift significantly, the boat may appear to move into a new arc, but the new arc should be part of the original circle, with the same radius, if the anchor holds.
Well, nuts. The wind must have shifted from south to west southwest. This was expected. However, we were out of the arc on the GPS display by 100 feet or so. We also weren’t in the original circle at all.
Obviously we had dragged, but I held out hope our anchor would reset itself and I’d see a new arc form on the GPS. Maybe then I could go back to sleep! Since our GPS Speed Over Ground (SOG) wasn’t particularly fast, I waited a few minutes in bed. I reset the anchor alarm to only 125 feet just to get my attention if things got ugly fast.
After about 20 minutes, it sounded like the wind had increased. I wasn’t sleeping, either. I checked the handheld GPS display again… while we actually had been in a new arc for a bit, we were now drifting out of that one. My hopes for the anchor to reset on its own were going away.
I got out of bed and checked the chartplotter in the cabin. It’s networked into the GPS mushroom antenna outside the boat (probably more accurate than the handheld GPS) and also displays wind speed, heading, and depth info. The winds were now 25 knots or so from the west, and we were slowly moving to the east.
I had set up the tracking feature on this GPS, too, and it displayed the same track as my handheld. Our previous anchoring arc was clearly visible, but we were now well outside of it. We weren’t completely adrift, however. Our motion to leeward was slow, and the bow still occasionally pointed into the wind. I assumed this meant we were anchored in mud with weeds, and the weeds were now clogging our anchor and preventing it from holding in the higher gusts. Our anchor was slowly “oozing” to leeward through the mud. Bummer.
I probably should have thought about adding more scope. However, since there was plenty of room around us when we initially anchored, we already had about 6 to 1 out already. Putting out a little more probably wouldn’t be good enough to let me sleep any more, though. Also, the more chain we deploy, the more chain we’d have to recover if it didn’t work. I preferred a full reset if it were a viable option.
By 5am the winds were gusting close to 30, and there was a tiny bit of light on the horizon. I checked when sunrise was… 5:53. Could we wait until there was more light to reset our anchor?
I was dreading the work involved in a reset. With 30 knot winds, retrieving our anchor would be a chore even with a windlass. I was sure there’d be a ton of weeds and mud I’d have to hack off the anchor before we could redeploy, too, and darkness just further complicates things.
It wasn’t a crisis, however. We were anchored in Detroit Harbor on the south side of Washington Island, WI, just off the end of the Door Peninsula. There was plenty of room to leeward of us that we could drag into before it got too shallow. Two other boats were anchored nearby, but they weren’t leeward of us. Based on our rate of drag, we figured waiting 20 minutes for more light was an acceptable risk… especially since we would actively monitor our position during that time. I started the motor and turned on the chartplotter in the cockpit. Kristin made some toast.
When enough light arrived, we started our work. Sure enough, the anchor was much heavier than normal as it rose off the bottom. Before it even broke the water’s surface I could see we had a “Christmas tree” worth of weeds stuck on it. With our washdown pump, a boat hook, and 15 minutes of hacking at it, I finally got the weeds off. Kristin slowly drove the boat around the anchorage as I worked.
By now it was quite light out, and some of the crew of a neighboring boat was in their cockpit, presumably drinking coffee and watching our struggles.
Despite finding the weeds on our anchor, I stubbornly hoped the wind shift was the cause of our dragging. I otherwise liked our original anchoring spot since the bottom was flat and I wasn’t too confident in trying to find our way through the shallower water closer to the windward shore, so we reset in the same spot with a full 7 to 1 scope. Holding seemed fine when we backed down, but 20 minutes later the same “oozing” to leeward started again.
Our original plan for the day was to sail the 70 miles east to Charlevoix, Michigan, on the other side of the lake. The forecasts I looked at weren’t agreeing with each other, though, with one calling for 15 knots of southwest wind and another calling for 30. I initially had more trust in the 15 knot forecast based on previous experience, though obviously the 30 knot forecast was proving to be more realistic. We’ve sailed across the lake with 30 knots of wind before, but we knew it would be pretty wavy and a lot of work. We were tired, not in a hurry, and didn’t want to break anything, so we preferred to wait out the weather. After some discussion, we decided we’d attempt to reset the anchor one more time in a different spot.
With more daylight to help us see obstructions on the bottom, we moved to the shallower area of the harbor in hopes of finding fewer weeds. Usually shallower means more weeds, though, and this area offered less protection from the wind. It also was closer to the neighboring boat, but maybe they knew something I didn’t. Backing down proved holding was good, so we chose to stay for a while longer.
The crew of the neighboring boat was still in their cockpit. In the past, I’ve been guilty of watching others having troubles with their anchor. Now the roles were reversed… we were the “entertainment” of the other boat for the morning!
As the sun rose higher in the sky later that day, we could see the bottom. It became apparent why the holding was better in our new location… we were anchored in sand, with no weeds nearby. If only I had known that this patch was better when we arrived two days earlier!
By early afternoon the winds calmed down comfortably. After some more rest in the morning, we were able to go swimming and relax. Not having enough time to get to anywhere in Michigan by a reasonable hour that day, we stayed put one more night before crossing the lake in the morning.
