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My boat came with a bracket on the pulpit to hold a Danforth style anchor, like this:
Rail Mount Anchor Bracket
Well, it's *supposed* to hold the anchor… Sometime between last weekend and this weekend it fell off.
While I'm glad it didn't fall off while sailing, that would have been alarming, having it fall off at the mooring wasn't ideal either because it got caught up in mooring tackle and try as I might I could not get the stoopid thing up.
The anchor rode was wrapped about five times around the mooring pendant, so I know the boats were swinging around a lot last week. I have ten feet of chain before the nylon, and I can't even pull up enough to see the chain, so it must really be wrapped around there good.
It's the end of the season here so I had to pull my boat. I cut the anchor rode and tied it off to the buoy. I sent an email to the city apologizing for tangling an anchor in their mooring and also asking that if it happens to come up with the mooring tackle when they pull it in a few weeks, would they mind leaving it on shore so I could come and get it.
I suppose I could buy a mask and try to dive for it, but it's moderately deep and the visibility this time of year is almost nothing.
It's a small boat, and it was only a Danforth knockoff, so was probably only a $100 anchor. But still!
I had been planning on getting some proper ground tackle anyway, but I wanted to keep the Danforth as a secondary. Oh well. Live and learn.
And I guess the lesson to be learned is that I should have had the anchor chain pinned to a cleat so that if it did fall out of the bracket it wouldn't have gone all the way to the bottom, taking the chain and a lot of nylon with it.
Rail Mount Anchor Bracket

Well, it's *supposed* to hold the anchor… Sometime between last weekend and this weekend it fell off.
While I'm glad it didn't fall off while sailing, that would have been alarming, having it fall off at the mooring wasn't ideal either because it got caught up in mooring tackle and try as I might I could not get the stoopid thing up.
The anchor rode was wrapped about five times around the mooring pendant, so I know the boats were swinging around a lot last week. I have ten feet of chain before the nylon, and I can't even pull up enough to see the chain, so it must really be wrapped around there good.
It's the end of the season here so I had to pull my boat. I cut the anchor rode and tied it off to the buoy. I sent an email to the city apologizing for tangling an anchor in their mooring and also asking that if it happens to come up with the mooring tackle when they pull it in a few weeks, would they mind leaving it on shore so I could come and get it.
I suppose I could buy a mask and try to dive for it, but it's moderately deep and the visibility this time of year is almost nothing.
It's a small boat, and it was only a Danforth knockoff, so was probably only a $100 anchor. But still!
I had been planning on getting some proper ground tackle anyway, but I wanted to keep the Danforth as a secondary. Oh well. Live and learn.
And I guess the lesson to be learned is that I should have had the anchor chain pinned to a cleat so that if it did fall out of the bracket it wouldn't have gone all the way to the bottom, taking the chain and a lot of nylon with it.