The Anchoring Perp Walk

The 40-footer putters into our anchorage just before sunset, past the boats already here, looking for a spot for the night. Eventually, the woman on the bow drops the hook, the man at the wheel guns back the throttle. Uh-oh, I think, that’ll never work on this viscous bottom. And along with everyone else anchored here, now I’m riveted as they drag, try again, drag. My husband, Douglas, and I call this performance the “perp walk,” after “Law and Order” scenes in which the handcuffed accused perpetrator struggles to cover his face while being swept, amid a hullabaloo of flashing lights, into the courthouse.

Aboard the 40-footer, predictably, tempers have escalated. Alleged good Samaritans on other boats begin calling out useless advice, some pointing to distant spots with “better holding.” Please. We all know that they just don’t want the perp dragging through their own boating neighborhood tonight. After five painful-to-watch tries, when their hook finally holds, the couple disappears below looking mortified.

It’s easy to be smug, but you know we’ve all been there. Every boater has different ways of doing things, and most times our boats protect us from ourselves and we prevail, allowing us to sit at the bar later and boast and criticize to our heart’s content. But with anchoring, more than with any other aspect of boating, the curtain goes up on a scene for the audience to watch, and even long-time boating couples admit they lose their cool more during anchoring, when both people are frequently tired and anxious, than during any other aspect of their boating life.

Douglas and I have had our share of anchoring debacles, so we’ve evolved an ironclad rule that the person at the bow calls the shots. Period. No questions asked. Then, one day, years back, after this rule was established, we were on a charter in Greece, and I decided it had been a while since I’d been the one at the bow calling the shots, so we switched. I hopped up to the bowsprit, looking for a good spot as we puttered through the anchorage, and repeatedly gave the hand signals back to Douglas to point us there. But when I signaled for him to go a little right, the boat went left, and when I signaled to stop – right here! – we continued.

I kept signaling, looking like a Manhattan traffic cop. Finally, the boat stopped in a completely different place, and I looked back to see Douglas holding his arms out with a whadda-ya-waiting-for look on his face. It was too windy to be heard, so I just dropped the anchor. When he pulled back, we dragged. Three interminable times. Afterward, I marched back to the cockpit and said, “Hey, I thought the person on the bow was supposed to be in charge of the maneuver.”

“Oh …” said Douglas, looking confused, “Right. But this time I was back here.” Since then we’ve sorted ourselves out and fine-tuned hand signals that work for us – forward left, forward right, slow down, stop to drop anchor, wait for it to settle and catch, drop more rode, back down at very low rpm until we’ve let out five times the depth for good scope, then back down at higher rpm to really dig in.

Once hooked, we switch positions and slowly back down once more, double-checking our bearings so we both can agree we’re well set. If either of us doubts the holding, we simply haul up the anchor and do it again. If the water isn’t freezing, one of us will jump in with mask, snorkel, and fins, and go down and check the set. Then we can sleep well at night.

So here we are today, dug in and sitting back to enjoy the show. Douglas and I are well aware that we’ve plowed miles of furrows through plenty of kelp beds over the years, tried and failed to anchor on hard bottoms, hooked our share of logs, and tangled our chain around some pretty weird objects – all performances that have entertained plenty of our fellow boaters. I’ll mention that when I run into the couple on the 40-footer down the line.