CPseudonym
Moderator Emeritus
I didn't suggest that knowing how many here probably sleep in "footies"....
I resemble that remark
I didn't suggest that knowing how many here probably sleep in "footies"....
I just set the alarm for double my scope or a little more. If it goes off in the middle of the night, I get up and look to see if I'm dragging. If not, I just add 25' or so to the alarm and go back to bed.
So far, I've never dragged.
BTW: I added an external buzzer to my Garmin plotter.
Actually the track of your movement at anchor is why I mark the location as I drop the anchor. I don't back down until the anchor is on the bottom and if it doesn't catch PDQ I start over anyway. In the morning my track shows me circling generally around the middle of the anchor alarm limit and not out at the edge as yours does.... I wait until the anchor is set before setting the anchor alarm on the main Furuno system, which is very easy on my system.
Exactly. So does setting the alarm ensure you never drag Ron, or does a good set with a good anchor ensure that..?
Just think of all the extra uninterrupted sleeps you would have had, without the false alarms.
The simplest, no power anchor alarm is drop a weight over the side about 10 feet from your anchor...tie the line attached to that weight to your ships bell or to a can of bolts on deck and you are now an old timer...
I know very little about smart phones as I don't have one. My wife and I went on a land trip once and the other guy had the bright idea of using his phone for travel information.In all fairness to cell phones, to my knowledge at least the Drag Queen uses true GPS and not tower triangulation so it's pretty accurate. .............
Nope...gotta be smarter than the equipment you use....and many generations of boaters were/are...I was going to suggest that, more as a joke than a serious suggestion. I think in a tidal area with reversing currents you would have a tangled mess by morning.
Actually the track of your movement at anchor is why I mark the location as I drop the anchor. I don't back down until the anchor is on the bottom and if it doesn't catch PDQ I start over anyway. In the morning my track shows me circling generally around the middle of the anchor alarm limit and not out at the edge as yours does.
I think my biggest complaint about setting the alarm on my Furuno system is that I have to leave both GPS units on to monitor an alarm and manually turn off the displays. This is probably a factor of the installation - there is one alarm buzzer for the two processors and it is connected to the radar/nav/depth unit to sound those alarms, for the GPS processor to sound an alarm both processors must be active.
Dave
My control units are immediately beside each monitor - you can see the trackballs on the right side of each unit. George's single one is below the Red/Blue/Green buttons to the right of his displays. For me the LCD monitors are because size matters - they are each 17 screens.
Dave
The simplest, no power anchor alarm is drop a weight over the side about 10 feet from your anchor...tie the line attached to that weight to your ships bell or to a can of bolts on deck and you are now an old timer...
And what happens when the tidal currents or winds change? Meanwhile, the anchor is probably holding, particularly if it is a Claw.
Nope...gotta be smarter than the equipment you use....and many generations of boaters were/are...
And what happens when the tidal currents or winds change? ...........
The lines wrap around each other and when the anchor drags, it drags whe weighted line with it so there's no "alarm".
When you try to retrieve your anchor, either the next morning when you're ready to move on or in the middle of the night in a thunderstorm, the lines are hopelessly tangled and you can't get your anchor back onto the boat.
Some folks are better off just staying in marinas every night.
OK, what's that supposed to mean?
My dad and uncle used to use that technique way back in the day and that is exactly what happened. I was the designated anchor ape. A simple solution to impeding raising the anchor is to use fishing line with weights on one end. You still have to make sure the catenary and thereby total length on the "alarm" line is the same as that of the anchor line.. the lighter line will tend to be shorter if you are not careful and you will get false alarms. I learned all this at an early age when there were no electronic solutions and some of our favorite spots were a little iffy holding wise, not to mention the red neck ground tackle system they had cadged together at no cost.