What is the deepest depth you have anchored in and why?

[ffiill]

Most boats here in Scotland carry several hundred feet of chain because there is a lot of seriously deep water.
Within 100 yards of my old mooring at about 30 feet the bottom used to drop off very quickly to over 500 feet!

[tdw]

Originally Posted by souljour2000

Curious why " there was no choice"...maybe you were adrift against a leeward reef? Maybe you were so tired you anchored and went below? All of the above? Details are half the fun here...could you be more specific Craig?

There are a couple of anchorages in the Pacific where the only place to anchor is in 100' plus depth. I'm guessing that is what Craig is talking about. Bora Bora maybe ?

Deepest I have ever anchored in is over 20metres (approx 65') in Cowan Creek NSW off Broken Bay. Reason to do so was overcrowding closer to shore and the need to get ashore. I was unbelievably thrilled when the windlass gave up the ghost as I started to haul back 35m chain, rope and anchor. Joy unbounded.

If 20 metres and the word Creek make you pause...Coal and Candle, Smiths and Cowan creeks are all mainly tidal offshoots of Broken Bay. Why Creeks ? I have no idea. During WWII, the US Navy kept a squadron of warships (cruiser I think was the biggest) anchored in this area.

[oceanscapt]

230' and I had to SCUBA dive the anchor to get it unstuck - neither tactic I recommend for anyone.

[tdw]

Originally Posted by oceanscapt

230' and I had to SCUBA dive the anchor to get it unstuck - neither tactic I recommend for anyone.

If that was me it would be not so much anchoring as dangling the anchor over the side.

[glassdad]

125' Off Decanso Bay in Catalina Island. We had 30' chain and 250' of rope on a 25# danforth. This was in a Columbia 28. We had a 24 hour anchor watch. We did this a few times when we could not get a mooring in Avalon Harbor. It was not fun pulling up the anchor. That was my job, the young strong son.

[klem]

~100' is the deepest for me and it was something that we did intentionally on a calm night. When I worked commercially, we would regular anchor in Sommes Sound, ME in about 60-70' of water and outside of the mooring field in Isles of Shoals in about 50-70'. We anchored in Castine, ME once in a little over 80' of water to quickly run ashore. It was a rare night when we didn't have at least 30' of water under us at high tide.

The S/V Westward anchored on Stellwagen Bank two summers ago overnight. They said the noise of the whales made it difficult to sleep.

[souljour2000]

The time I anchored in 40 feet or so of water was only a few weeks ago...I was nine miles out in the Gulf by myself and on a good weather window...enjoyed a nice quiet night at first...so much so that I had put a kind of bungee damper..theres a name for it...snubber..maybe that's it...on the anchor line like some people do at moorings. This was done to take the" yank" or slapback out of the 160 feet or so of anchor line/chain I had out that was making a bit of an uncomfortable motion in the 1-2 foot "seas".
Then..about 2 am...a sudden steady wind of about 15 knots came up off the land and lasted for about a half hour or so...this land breeze caught me a bit by surprise...but eventually equalized with the water temp but only after I had immediately got up and took off the bungee arrangement and tied off again as normal.

[RedtheBear]

off subject but excellent hunting on south side of Tampa bay inlet

[HDChopper]

Exellent info in threads like this ! Thanks everyone

[sailjunkie]

40 feet. With 300 ft of rode and 30ft of chain, we could have gone deeper. The down side is that you have to eventually bring it up!