Where words matter, an apocalypse of a different sort, and someone making some sense...
I actually put a lot of effort into avoiding talking about anchors and anchoring... Face it, it's not really a sexy subject, folks have seriously crazy deep seated opinions on anchor stuff, and discussions can get heated enough to inspire mild mannered owners of Bendytoys to go all Berserker on your ass (something of a nautical tradition as it happens).
Most of my education involving anchors and anchoring has really been from the fact that I spend a lot of time underwater diving various anchorages and seeing how anchors behave where fluke meets the bottom which can be very instructive and I highly recommend you do it as well, if for no other reason to see up close and personal how real world anchoring seldom looks anything like the hype folks who make anchors throw around.
So, I won't go into actual anchors but simply the methodology of putting your anchor down with the best chance of avoiding those embarrassing inadvertent changes of scenery of the dragging kind...
When coming into an anchorage my first thoughts are simply to put my boat and its anchor as far away as possible from every other boat. I'll be the first to admit that part of this is simply because I'm not a real sociable fellow but the main reasons are it gives me the ability to put out more scope and not have to worry about having to worry about going bump in the night, with the added bonus of not having to listen to some boat playing Barry Manilow.
In the real world of anchoring, scope is your best friend and beats next-gen super expensive anchors all to hell in the holding sweepstakes. If that scope is all chain it's even more effective though there is nothing wrong with rope and chain rodes if the chain part is at least the length of the boat (or better yet round up to the next significant number... In our case with our 34-foot boat I'd think 50 feet is the next significant number) and more is always better. Think of chain as being a lot like money, more is ALWAYS better...
Going back to being the underwater observer, most folks in an anchorage are mostly pivoting on their chain and not pulling on their anchor at all... For instance, where we are anchored at the moment, we have about 100 feet of chain out and for the last week or so we've been pivoting on the anchor chain about one third of the chain length or about 30 feet off our bow...
Which actually brings up an important point... Since most folks pivot on their rode instead of their anchors the actual location of the anchor can be quite surprising and right now our anchor is maybe 30 feet off to our side by nearly a boat length. This, of course, means anyone trying to anchor parallel to us might be in for something of a surprise, yet another reason to anchor as far as physically possible from other boats other than the avoidance of my rather intense collection of Captain Beefheart played at ear numbing volume at 3:00 AM...
Next Monday we'll talk about getting the anchor wet!
Listening to Sons of Bill
So it goes...
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