Gogarty wrote:

I thought the one thing we all agreed upon here is that nobody criticizes
anyone else's boat handling because no matter how skilled and experienced you
are sooner or later you will end up in the same embarrasssing not to say
dangerous situation as the clunkiest among us. This does not apply to motor
boaters.

Who agreed on that? And why, if we are agreed, do people say that an
electric windlass is absolutely required and anyone who does not want
one must be some kind of idiot?

So your anchor always sets and you almost never have to reset? Great. Try a
bottom covered with tree branches or other fouling. Or soupy mud. Or being
downwind of a raft that has broken loose. Or...or...or... And don't criticize
ny anchoring technique when you don't know under what conditions I am
operating or with what equipment.

I am assuming (although we know about that) that you are referring to
me. I was tentative about offering any criticism because I wasn't
very comfortable with doing it, but it does seem to me that if someone
OFTEN has to reset an anchor so that an electric windlass would be an
absolute necessity, that it might be a good idea to check up on your
anchoring techniques, or your pick of an anchorage or your equipment
so that you don't have to do it so often. Even with an electric
windlass it would be a PITA to do it OFTEN.

When we have a problem, we usually try to figure out what we did
wrong, so that we can avoid doing it again. And in no case has the
lack of an electric windlass been a problem. Even when one has back
problems, the amount of leverage provided by the windlass handle is
such that no hard effort is required, and it isn't a back issue.

Plus, I don't think that being downwind of a raft that has broken
loose happens very often.

Now that I think about it, I remember more times that we have had to
reset than I did originally. They didn't turn up in my memory
because they were really non-events compared to all the times that the
anchor held beautifully without resetting even in fairly violent
stormy conditions.

For instance when we turned into Mile Hammock Bay, an artificial
dredged anchorage (on Marine Corps property - Camp Lejeune NC) at
2:30 pm in the rain in November 2000, there were 3 other boats already
there . Bob decided to anchor on the inner edge of the dredged area
away from the other boats. We had difficulty because we would start
out in 10 feet of water and as he let out the anchor chain, we would
be blown out onto the shallow part and end up in 5 feet of water. Bob
reset the anchor once, and then just decided to put out less scope.
Eight other boats came into the anchorage later, including a trawler
who appeared to have anchored on top of our anchor. But the trawler
left very early so we didn't have to decide what to do about that. We
didn't anchor in that anchorage again because we figured our mileage
so that we didn't have to - mostly because the entrance to the
anchorage was a bit shallow, and Bob hates going aground but also
because there was a cheap marina in Swansboro which we stayed at on
subsequent trips. (Although on the last trip in the spring of 2004
the docks appeared quite deteriorated so I don't know if we would go
there again.)