Nobody ever thinks about anchoring.  You get to the anchorage, do the anchoring dance, look around for a while, and go to sleep.  Next morning, you get up, have some coffee and try to figure out where you are so you can get back to where you wanted to be.

When we commissioned the Shearwater, she was equipped with a 45 pound (more or less) CQR anchor - probably sufficient for cruising around the charter world of the Virgin Islands.  We decided we wanted to always be where we were when we went to sleep.  A visit to Jeremiah (Voyage's anchor supplier) yielded Big Bruce, poised on the left with some beautiful Atlantic Bottlenose Dolphins.

Twice in the four years of sailing the Shearwater we awoke to find ourselves adrift.  Once we were off Saba and tied to a mooring that had broken loose from its anchor point, the other time was our mistake, we anchored on grass over sand - and harvested the grass as we drifted through the anchorage.  This poor chap wasn't so lucky:  She was anchored next to the Shearwater with three small anchors set out at 120 degree angles - another poor boat with an owner who had never had much trig in high school.  Shearwater sat on Big Bruce with a smaller anchor shackled to the trip point like a pilot parachute to help turn Bruce when the wind veered.  It was her forth hurricane in 2004 - this time she broke her bridle, her hurricane bridle, and stretched her chain to worthlessness, but the ground tackle held and the boat took no damage.

In the photo on the left, if you look closely, you can see two lines coming from the two bows - connected well below the water line and attached via a shackle to the anchor chain.  They take the load - and both this one and the backup that was attached to the beam cleats broke during the hurricane that did the damage above.

There is, however, no such thing as a free lunch.  Big Bruce weighs 50 kg, about 110 pounds.  It is difficult to recover the ground tackle without a windless and the mounting position Voyage choose for the factory-supplied windless won't permit full recovery of more than about 50' of chain without opening the locker and restacking the chain.  The photo on the right shows the solution to this problem.

First, we replaced the Voyage-supplied windless with a larger size, the Tigress, that is sufficient to handle the ground tackle.  Next we moved it as far aft as we could without touching the fuel tank and raised it as high as we could without having the cleat on top of the windless hit the anchor locker lid.  The result is shown above on the rignt.

The chain path from the anchor chain tube in the port compression strut had to be straight.  To preserve this path, we glassed and bolted two wooden blocks to the "floor" where the windless was mounted and bolted an anchor roller and guide to the wooden shim.  We were careful to align the roller both vertically and horizontally so the chain did not touch the anchor tube when under load.

Once the roller was mounted, this determined the position of the windless.  We had to be very careful to ensure the chain ran true on the chain wheel - or it jumped off and let the chain play out without control.  If you look at the photo on the right, you can see clearly how we bolted a piece of angle aluminum to the original windless mount to stop the new platform from riding forward under load.  The new platform is glassed top and bottom and fitted to a horizontal block we bolted and glassed to the old platform and the starboard side of the anchor locker.  In the photo below you can clearly see how the wood mount was fitted to clear the tank.                                                         

You must carefully fit the platform to ensure the locker lid completely closes. 

As you look closely to the lower right of the photo, you can see the top of a piece of aluminum angle bracket that is bolted to the platform and (although you can's see it) is also bolted thru the bottom of the anchor locker floor to support the torque of the windless under load.

Finally, we eliminated the splices Voyage places under the anchor platform by using longer leads on the wires within the windless motor.  The unit has performed trouble free and using the extended controls that lead the buttons back to the cockpit, we can deploy and weigh the anchor from the helm.

The unit must be strong enough to withstand hurricane force winds - so during normal winds we can come into an anchorage under sail, turn downwind to pick our spot, and deploy the anchor under sail.  She fetches up, we drop the sail and are comfortable that we will be where we stopped when morning comes.