What have you snagged your anchor on?

[MarkCK]

I havent snagged my anchor on anything but dead trees that are on the bottom of the lake. But I bought my anchor from a friend that snagged his anchor on someone else snagged anchor. He said it took him a couple of hours to get it up.

[noelex77]

Originally Posted by Bene505

Moelex,

Did you know in advance that you had the chain snagged around a boulder? I mean, since you would be laying upwind of where you would expect to be. Or did you find out after you started raising the anchor?

Regards,
Brad

I have had both occur. I usually go for a snorkel at least once a day in tropical waters and look at the anchor so I usually know what’s happening. If it is caught I often leave it however, as if sometimes uncatches as the boat swings and its not worth starting the engine to try and free it.
You do need to be aware if other boats anchor close as you will swing differently. Its also important to consider the tide if the chain is caught close to the boat. I was once anchored with a friend and we left for a long trip ashore. When we came back the bow of his 46 foot yacht was way down. The chain had caught the tide risen. There was a lot of force on the chain and the bow roller was damaged. Another hour or so and I think the chain would have snapped or the cleats pulled out.( 3m tides)

[travlineasy]

The worst thing I've snagged was a 60-pound concrete block that was abandoned by a commercial crabber running a trot line in a small creek near Solomons, Maryland. I was not aware I snagged it until another boat anchored upwind of me broke free during the middle of the night in a howling gale and was headed directly at me. I saw the boat bearing down on me, blew the air horn, and no one on the other boat flinched. I clamored to the bow, grabbed the rode, and the anchor didn't budge. I then ran to the cockpit, fired up the engine and dragged by anchor in revers to avoid a nasty collision. The guy in the 50-foot catamaran finally woke up when his boat slammed into a pier piling on the opposite side of the creek. The next morning, it took every ounce of muscle two grown men could muster to retrieve my anchor, which was firmly hooked to the concrete block and an old crab line. I'm too old to do stuff like this, so the next item on the bucket list for the new boat is an electric anchor windlass.

Cheers,

Gary

[Bene505]

Originally Posted by travlineasy

The worst thing I've snagged was a 60-pound concrete block that was abandoned by a commercial crabber running a trot line in a small creek near Solomons, Maryland. I was not aware I snagged it until another boat anchored upwind of me broke free during the middle of the night in a howling gale and was headed directly at me. I saw the boat bearing down on me, blew the air horn, and no one on the other boat flinched. I clamored to the bow, grabbed the rode, and the anchor didn't budge. I then ran to the cockpit, fired up the engine and dragged by anchor in revers to avoid a nasty collision. The guy in the 50-foot catamaran finally woke up when his boat slammed into a pier piling on the opposite side of the creek. The next morning, it took every ounce of muscle two grown men could muster to retrieve my anchor, which was firmly hooked to the concrete block and an old crab line. I'm too old to do stuff like this, so the next item on the bucket list for the new boat is an electric anchor windlass.

Cheers,

Gary

Gary,

How did your anchor snag? Was there a loop of rebar at the top that your anchor hooked, or did the block itself get wedged in your anchor's flukes? (What type of anchor do you have?)

Regards,
Brad

[jackdale]

Haven't snagged - yet.

Just missed a wreck in White House Bay on St. Kitts.

[travlineasy]

The flukes actually went right into the block openings and wedged tight as a drum. I couldn't have placed them in the openings that accurately if I had been trying. I was using a standard, 10-pound, Danforth Anchor with 12-feet of 1/4-inch chain attached to the rode.

Gary

[LarryandSusanMacDonald]

In Beaufort, NC, we pulled up the largest pair of BVDs I'd ever seen. I don't even want to speculate how they got there for fear of the image it might conjure up.

[kwaltersmi]

We snagged our 33lbs claw on a wreck in about 35 feet of water. She held tight all night, but when I went to retrieve the hook at about 4am when were hoping to get an early start on the day's passage I found that it wouldn't budge. After eventually using the snatch blocks and the jib winch and a all the muscle we could muster, we pulled up a 4' x 4' sheet of rusted metal wrapped in our rode. I rested the metal on the dinghy and un-shackled the anchor from the rode and then dropped the rode back into the water. Luckily the metal untangled as the rode sank and we were free! You can read the details on this blog post.

Below is the large bay we anchored in. Guess what we snagged on?

[Pau Hana Daz]

Guesing this happened in the west side of the bay (looks too deep elsewhere)...

[SimonV]

A couple of years ago I snagged mine on a cat. I was trying to get oy of the marina, he had left his spinniker launcher out and protruding into the fairway. Now that was fun and games.