Best anchor for the Delta

I have an "uncle-in-law" who has been boating in this area longer than I've been alive. He swears by the CQR plow anchor and does very well with it. That CQR has the sharp point and really looks deadly hanging off of a pulpit. He has an easier time setting anchor in weeds than I do, probably because that sharp plow does good job of cutting into weeds. He has a manual windlass and I've seen him ratchet up some pretty good globs of weed.

But, I've seen that anchor start to plow a furrow for him one or twice. No anchor is perfect all of the time,

Last summer I watched a 50-footer come in early in the afternoon and anchor about 50 yards from our boat. He dropped a big plow anchor, short scoped it about 4 to 1 without setting at full scope first. He drove a danforth-style stern anchor out in a smaller boat and dropped it. Again, short scope. About five that evening he took off with his admiral and left the boat alone. Slack tide set in about 30 minutes later and a light breeze blew the boat and both dragging anchors to the riprap a couple of hundred yards away. Luckily, he heard the radio call on 16 and arrived at the boat shortly after the tow boat got there. This was NOT the same incident you read about recently in Bay & Delta Yachtsman.

I saw the same boat a couple of weeks later not far from where I saw it the first time. That time he had two main anchors out at what looked like full scope and a stern anchor.
 
Ditto on the CQR. If you spend time in the marinas, you'll see CQR anchors on most bow pulpits.

Anchors.sized.jpg
 
An interesting observation. Plow anchors- CQR and the Delta. I checked our Marina and there were more Deltas. The CQRs seemed to be on more of the older slower boats. Almost all the larger planing boats had Deltas hanging there. In any case, plow anchors.
 
The anchors you see at marinas are an indication of what people are buying. The anchors that look like they have been used a lot recently tell you even more.
 
Up in the San Juans, you usually see (on 30' plus boats) a CQR or Plow, and a smaller danforth.

But the large hook is usually a CQR or Bruce, with a smaller Danforth lunch hook.
 
I went out to Spindrift Marina to do some stuff on the boat and took a little time out to see what the anchor situation looked like.

Spindrift is located on the south end of Andrus Island on the San Joaquin River. I looked at anchors on the approximately 130 boats found in the covered slips, so I only looked at powerboats. Spindrift is an older marina and has a higher percentage of boats under 30' than the newer facilities. About 50% of the boats are under 30', the remaining half range from 32' to 42'.

Better than 90% of the boats had fluke anchors. The most popular was the West Marine variety, followed by several Danforth models, some Tiedown models, four Fortress anchors and one slip ring anchor.

Claw anchors were the next most popular group, but trailed the fluke anchors by a huge margin. There were three Bruce anchors, one Claw Anchor and two more that I didn't check closely.

Plow anchors were represented by one each: Delta Fast Set, CQR, and one I couldn't identify.

Three boats had no visible anchors.

The popularity of fluke anchors among these Delta boaters is obvious regardless of boat size or vintage. It didn't matter if the boat had an anchor pulpit or not, the fluke anchors were king. Nearly all of the bigger boats had big fluke anchors.
 
You don't need an overly heavy anchor if you have enough chain to keep it laying in the proper position. If you just want weight, do like a houseboat I saw and drop a cinderblock tied with yellow poly rope off the bow------no scope needed!

Of course, that recommendation is a joke!
 
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