Capt. JG wrote:

If the holding is good and you're only going to be there a short time, and
it's during the day, you don't need an anchor light, and you don't need to
keep a watch. Why two anchors? Is the bottom that lousy or the wind/current
shifting that much? How did you deploy?


I may want to spend the night on occasion. The reasons for two anchors
are as follows:

A. There may be traffic in and out, and I want to restrict the "swing"
so I stay in a relatively small area. I may have to change to one
anchor if other boats are on a single anchor and I have to swing with
the crowd, but I don't think that will be the case.

B. Just north of the island is the Houston-Galveston ship channel, with
lots of traffic of all kinds. Two anchors, even if both are on the bow,
provide a little better security and backup, particularly if there is a
change in tide direction that might lead to dragging one of the anchors.
In particular, I would hate to wake up in the middle of the night and
find that, due to a change in tidal currents, a single anchor
(originally set hard with 7:1 scope) was dragging and I was floating
across the Houston ship channel.

Jim