Anchor alarm

[Franklin]

Yesterday when I was in the boat store, I heard a guy looking for an anchor alarm. That sounded funny to me but then thought...maybe he was looking for a buzzer that he could hook into his GPS so that he could put it in the birth to wake him up. Anybody heard of this?

 

[Rick Webb]

Lots of GPSs Have Them

Not sure how effective they are. Anyone used one?

 

[Karl]

Not loud enough

Most GPS equipment now come with this alarm. The problem has been that the GPS is usually mounted at the helm or at the Nav station. Most of the alarms are not that loud, and won't wake you up.

 

[Franklin]

yeah

it would wake you up if you were in the cockpit but not in the cabin...especially if the wind was blowing. You would think though that a GPS would allow you to plug in a speaker but I don't ever remember seeing anything like that on a GPS. My hand held has an anchor alarm on it but there is not speaker for the sound. It just flashes "Alert". Kind of silly huh

 

[Mulf]

I added a Raymarine external alarm..

that hooks right into the RL70 hsb2 type Raymarine chartplotter system. I did this because my ears aren't what they used to be and I barely hear the basic alarm. Believe me, you wont miss this one. While I installed mine at the helm of my H410, I believe you could install it anywhere along the system, such as at the nav station, etc.

 

[novelman17128]

Anchor alarms

Inexpensive fish finders/depth gages usually have anchor alarms and you can take them into the cabin at night, just allow enough wire.

 

[Landsend]

most high end GPS's have them...

You can even set a radius of anchor swing, to trigger the alarm. Unfortunatly they aren't very loud. Kind of like the depth alarm on a depth gauge.

 

[Benny]

Use it all the time.

We keep a handheld Garmin 42 as backup to the cockpit GPS chartplotter and at night set the anchor alarm to a radius of 200 ft. The chartplotter also has an anchor alarm but it is inaudible when you are inside the cabin. That handheld GPS prevented us from getting grounded at 3;00 AM in the infamous "Rodriguez" anchorage out of Key Largo. A word to the wise put in a fresh set of batteries in the handheld as an alarm will also beep when the batteries go down. Have been woken up in panic on a couple occasions because I didnt change batteries. One of these days I will get a 12V plug for it. We leave the charplotter on all night and in the morning we can see all the meandering the boat did at anchor that night.

 

[Steve]

Two alarms

I use the anchor alarm every time I spend the night on the hook (set for .01nm). I also set my depth alarm as a backup. Usually I forget to turn the anchor alarm off so when I leave, it triggers (at least I know it works!). Mine is fairly loud and if I leave the port open between the cockpit and the aft berth, I don't have a problem hearing it.

 

[Big Windy]

Depth Finder

My Raymarine depth finder has an anchor alarm function. Did not realize it until I looked at the manual.