This weekends trip to Catalina was awesome in many many ways, but was also a bit stressful, and included a couple major lessons, thankfully none of them causing any harm. The first one was that we should have left on schedule. This always seems to happen with my friends, but this time being a couple hours late bit us in the ass, and we got there just a little too late to get a mooring. That left us with the choice of anchoring, or heading several miles up the coast to hopefully find a mooring there.
Since we wanted to get dinner in Avalon that night, and see the sights there the next day we wanted to stay as close as we could. We quickly discovered that our anchoring areas were going to be pretty limited by the amount of rode I had on board though. The water there is deep, and having not planned to anchor I didn't have enough line. Lesson 2, plan for deep water and bring more anchor line next time. We consulted the charts and found a spot over off pebbly beach which was shallow and sandy and close enough for the dinghy to get us back.
Here came what was to be the biggest lesson of the weekend. I was using the anchor that came with the boat, a 13lb danforth style that has served me very well in my usual anchorage down in Coronado. I'd never had an issue with it so I wasn't terribly worried. However the bottom in Coronado is soft and gooey and pretty much perfect for a good solid hold. There's also generally little to no current or wave action and mild winds. Our Catalina location was a little different. Not protected at all, with pretty significant wave action. After several attempts at setting the anchor I found the biggest drawback to this particular POS. Instead of having a solid shank with a hole in it, the shank is constructed from round bar, folded into a long U shape creating a long slot, with a ring in it which slides back and forth. Obviously this is to make the anchor easier to retrieve, but for me it just made for frustration as the anchor kept falling in a position which put the ring at the wrong end and caused us to drag it backwards instead of into the ground. After repeated attempts we got it securely set, got dinner, came back and went to bed. We didn't sleep real well with all the movement and nervousness about the anchor, but it held just fine.
The next morning we headed back to shore, got breakfast and enjoyed some of the local tourist activities. About midday harbor patrol called and let me know that some people had moved around and they now had a mooring for us. I did a little dance, walked up to their office and paid, then headed back to the dinghy dock to retrieve our vessel. As we were motoring out I noticed that all the boats that were anchored along the shore had switched directions since the night before (and since that morning) I didnt think much of it, cause we had circled the anchor all night, but the wind and waves are a lot stronger during the day. When we started getting close to my boat I suddenly realized that it had begun to drag anchor. Thankfully it hadn't gone very far, and wasn't in any danger (yet) but really that was just luck, and I had now lost all confidence in our equipment. Once we got on board and fired up the motor I pulled up the anchor and sure enough, when the boat reversed direction that stupid ring swapped ends and pulled the anchor out of the bottom instead of simply flipping it and resetting.
No more, I'm done. Time for something else. That night we had a mooring, but next time we're gonna be armed with much better ground tackle in case we have to do this again.
Since we wanted to get dinner in Avalon that night, and see the sights there the next day we wanted to stay as close as we could. We quickly discovered that our anchoring areas were going to be pretty limited by the amount of rode I had on board though. The water there is deep, and having not planned to anchor I didn't have enough line. Lesson 2, plan for deep water and bring more anchor line next time. We consulted the charts and found a spot over off pebbly beach which was shallow and sandy and close enough for the dinghy to get us back.
Here came what was to be the biggest lesson of the weekend. I was using the anchor that came with the boat, a 13lb danforth style that has served me very well in my usual anchorage down in Coronado. I'd never had an issue with it so I wasn't terribly worried. However the bottom in Coronado is soft and gooey and pretty much perfect for a good solid hold. There's also generally little to no current or wave action and mild winds. Our Catalina location was a little different. Not protected at all, with pretty significant wave action. After several attempts at setting the anchor I found the biggest drawback to this particular POS. Instead of having a solid shank with a hole in it, the shank is constructed from round bar, folded into a long U shape creating a long slot, with a ring in it which slides back and forth. Obviously this is to make the anchor easier to retrieve, but for me it just made for frustration as the anchor kept falling in a position which put the ring at the wrong end and caused us to drag it backwards instead of into the ground. After repeated attempts we got it securely set, got dinner, came back and went to bed. We didn't sleep real well with all the movement and nervousness about the anchor, but it held just fine.
The next morning we headed back to shore, got breakfast and enjoyed some of the local tourist activities. About midday harbor patrol called and let me know that some people had moved around and they now had a mooring for us. I did a little dance, walked up to their office and paid, then headed back to the dinghy dock to retrieve our vessel. As we were motoring out I noticed that all the boats that were anchored along the shore had switched directions since the night before (and since that morning) I didnt think much of it, cause we had circled the anchor all night, but the wind and waves are a lot stronger during the day. When we started getting close to my boat I suddenly realized that it had begun to drag anchor. Thankfully it hadn't gone very far, and wasn't in any danger (yet) but really that was just luck, and I had now lost all confidence in our equipment. Once we got on board and fired up the motor I pulled up the anchor and sure enough, when the boat reversed direction that stupid ring swapped ends and pulled the anchor out of the bottom instead of simply flipping it and resetting.
No more, I'm done. Time for something else. That night we had a mooring, but next time we're gonna be armed with much better ground tackle in case we have to do this again.
So it sounds like we're exactly on the same page as far as Avalon anchoring goes!
