500 yards? We anchor within 50 feet of shore on the swing, sometimes much
closer.. at 500 yrds, you could put out the entire 200 feet, which would
pretty much ensure good holding except under the most extreme conditions,
which I doubt would come up.

--
"j" ganz @@
www.sailnow.com

"Charlie Morgan" wrote in message
...
On 29 Jul 2006 06:20:56 -0700, "Capt. Rob" wrote:


That unit and other Chartplotter/GPS combos can also used to make sure
you are
not dragging in another way that is often more useful than the anchor
alarm,
visual checking and RADAR combined.


I've also got a way-to-heavy CQR with 20 feet of chain and 200
line....I sleep really well at anchor. Sometimes it's within 500 yards
of shore, which too close for Scotty Potty even when he's heading home.
Oh....I forgot....Scotty doesn't sail anymore!


RB
35s5
NY

At present, Scott's entire boat is effectively a firmly set anchor. Lets
hope it
doesn't fall over!

Meanwhile, even your oversized setup "could" drag, and there is an easy
and
accurate way to monitor that. For an anchor alarm to sound, you must drag
pretty
far, as the setting has to account for a swinging circle all the way
around the
anchor. On 100 feet of scope, you need to set the drag alarm for over 200
feet.

In addition to that, you can simply observe the breadcrumb route track
that the
GPS can generate. As you swing back and forth at anchor, it will keep
retracing
a fairly tight arc which, because it is not exact, will create a thick
black
"smile". As long as the smile doesn't start getting really elongated
relative to
the pivot point you are not dragging. Simple enough.

CWM