So we anchored this weekend for the first time (for those of you just tuning
in we're 1 month new to boating).

My anchor is a danforth knockoff and seems to weigh about 1 ounce, it's
really light. We putt-putted out to Big Grenadier (Pitch Pine Point I
believe it's called) running through the textbook steps for anchoring to
make sure we had a good grasp of the "how to" of the whole thing even if
just in theory. We were a little anxious never having done it before and
made a deal not to lose patience with each other.

So we found our spot and motored forward and with the wife handling the
anchor I stopped our forward momentum. She lowered (not dropped) the anchor
and gave me the sign that it was on the bottom (by yelling "OKAAAAY IT'S ON
THE BOOOOTTTTTOOOOOM" ... clearly we have yet to work out some hand
signals).

I reversed slowly ... and here we temporarily depart from the textbook.

At this point I have to mention that there was another cruiser making his
way through the cove and at exactly this point he altered his course to
ensure that the room I wanted to use to back down would be filled up by his
friggin' boat. I was a little incredulous and kept backing down thinking
that he couldn't possibly not realize what I'm doing. But no, he really,
really wanted to use that bit of water (as opposed to the 80 square miles of
EMPTY water available to him) so I ended up knocking off my rearward
momentum and bascially getting totally balled up while I waited for him to
pass.

He gave me a wave as he went by ... I pretended not to notice.

In the meantime the wind shifted and everyone simply swung on their anchors
while I drifted and dragged everything towards them -- I had been trying to
hold position but relative to what? Everything was moving. While trying to
figure out if my position was salvageable I lost track of where the rode was
and started worrying that I was going to overrun it -- and here we sort of
forgot the part where we agreed not to lose patience with each other.

So ... we retrieved the anchor, took a deep breath, apologized for being
snarky and got set to do it again.

This time it went great. Had what felt like a really good set and spent a
few hours hanging around there. I spent most of the time worrying about
dragging the anchor but I did manage to squeeze some enjoyment out of the
afternoon.

When it was time to go everything went well, I went forward and helped when
we got to the chain since the anchor was much heavier than before ... it
pulled up about 3 tons of mud. A few good dunks and it was cleaned off but I
have to tell you, seeing all that mud there gave me a great feeling -- it
was like a giant brick of mud, really hard. That thing had been dug in nice
and tight, not bad for a 1 ounce anchor.

We anchored twice more on the weekend and dragged once. Here are the things
I learned:

-- you really, really need to mark your rode so you know how much line you
have out. If you lose track you can't just eyeball it because most of your
rode is now underwater.
-- a washdown on the bow would be a great thing.
-- it's really easy to get disoriented as to where you are in relation to
.... well, everything. Everything moves on the water including the water,
there's nothing to use as a solid reference point.
-- the harder you set your anchor (within reason obviously), the more
comfortable you feel while hanging off it.
-- the lovely anchor lady should be the one who indicates the various steps
such as hold, drift, back down and come up.
-- even though the full light on the holding tank is on, you can squeeze one
more pee in there
-- having a 1/2 and a 3/4 full light on the holding tank would be a great
thing