How do you enter a anchoring spot with boats already there?

[ris]

We of course are new to this anchoring out, 2 weeks into the trip now. When we come up I always call and ask on channel 16 if any one in the anchorage spot is listening. We then ask where and how to anchor in relation to the other boats. We have always been given useful info. Today we are sitting in the same place near Cumberland Island where we have been since Tuesday night except when we tried to cross St. Andrews Sound and had to renter this river and anchor again. We are working on stuff on the boat when my wife says look at that big catamaran. About a 40 footer goes by and tries anchoring in 5 spots and the asks us about anchoring and we tell him about the 7 ft tide today and to anchor pointing north as the wind is out of the north or NE. He anchors about 250ft north of us. Hope he is anchored well as we are down wind. That is the first boat we have seen in here but the winds are up to 30 to 40 mph so everyone is hunting anchoring spots.
About 2 hours later a 35 foot or longer trawler comes in and never calls out. He is headed to the east of us and is about to hit ground. The wild horses come out at low tide and much grass 20 and 30 yards from shore when it is exposed. The water in this river is 18 to 24 feet till it rises steeply to 0 feet at low tide in only maybe 30 feet. Plus my anchor is in 5 feet of water at low tide against the east shore. I call on the radio and tell him to turn to port immediately or he is going to hit ground. He comes back saying it is 20 feet deep. I reply my anchor is 100ft NE of my boat near shore and his 20 feet is going to be 4 feet in about 30 feet. He at least listens and goes to the west of us and anchors on the other side of the cat sailboat. He never says another word to us not even thanks. He might say thanks when the water drops 7 feet by morning and he sees how close he came to being stuck in the mud.
What do you do when pulling into an anchorage you have never been in and boats are already there?
In less than 2 weeks we have pulled 1 sailboat off a mudbank, failed to radio another trawler that ran aground going around us as we thought he must have been in the area before, and listened to 3 boats that ran aground in the edges of the ICW near us today. The trawler today would have run aground or run over our rode if we had not stopped him. Is this typical boat "captain" stupidity or just people afraid to ask for a little assistance.
Also both the other boats here might have put out 50 feet of rode in 20 ft of water, is this typical?

[Chinook]

I don't normally radio other boats in an anchorage when I'm on approach, however I do pay attention to where they lie and whether they're on one anchor or two. I like to slowly cruise around the anchorage, checking depths and trying to calculate the optimum place for me to drop. It's generally accepted that the newly arriving boat must maintain ample swing room from boats already anchored, even if it means being out where there is somewhat less protection from the wind, chop or current. One nice thing about MacGregors is their shallow draft. Even in a crowded anchorage, there's almost always room between the other boats and shore. I have had experience twice with big boats crowding in too close. In one case, a large sailboat slid in too close to us and I hailed them, pointing out right where my anchor was, since I was using a trip line and buoy there. The captain went right ahead and anchored. A couple hours later he swung so close to us that I was able to reach over from our cockpit and knock on their cabin. I once again repeated that he was too close, that one of us was going to have to move, and it wasn't going to be me. He pulled up and moved to a more suitable place. To give him credit, he did dinghy over later and apologized. I think his wife may have had something to do with that. In the other case, a large sport fisher in the Bahamas moved in late in the day and anchored too close to us. We were on a single anchor and he dropped both bow and stern anchors, with his stern anchor virtually on top of ours. I pointed the problem out to him and he simply ignored me, turning his music up all the louder. Most cruisers out there seem to be knowledgeable and courteous when it comes to anchoring, however, there are always rude exceptions.

[Russ]

I have never spoken with another boat when anchoring. Might be a good idea though.

I've seen just about every kind of stupid watching others anchor. My all time favorite is a power boat pulls into an anchorage and send someone up on the bow. The crew person tosses the anchor and rode off the side and cleats off the end. Of course it gets tangled and they are soon dragging down wind.

Scope..yea I see few people using the correct scope.

--Russ

[mrron_tx]

Alas .... There are always good Folks as well as A$$ holes everywhere Ron.

[Catigale]

I've always used the Mac shallow draft to anchor away from others. The only time I was asked to move was by my ( now neighbor ) Frank on Cuttyhunk when I anchored too close to his mooring first year. This had much less to do with my distance and more about his lack of confidence in my anchoring.

A few years later the Cuttyhunk Harbormaster told me Frank had given me the seal of anchoring approval and now we meet every summer

[Starscream]

Everyone's probably seen this already.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wxg30c6z00E

A friend of mine did his graduate thesis on the % of boat captains who are idiots, and he scientifically proved that the figure was 99.997%.




P.S. no, not really. But in my opinion that figure can't be far off.

[Jimmyt]

A true classic... Nothing brings folks together like impending doom.

[Seapup]

One nice thing about MacGregors is their shallow draft. Even in a crowded anchorage, there's almost always room between the other boats and shore.

This has always worked for us in the Chesapeake.

[yukonbob]

There are other people around when you anchor?

[Russ]

There are other people around when you anchor?

Not everyone is as lucky as us Bob. If we can see another boat, we find another spot.




--Russ

[yukonbob]

There are other people around when you anchor?

If we can see another boat, we find another spot.


--Russ

Hahaha! Us too! My biggest fear is having a whale land on us in the middle of the night.

[Catigale]

You can outrun the blue whales.....slower.

[BOAT]

You can outrun the blue whales.....slower.

Already covered that here:

https://youtu.be/FEHTozrpL-I
And this is not joke! It's real and it is also right in the waters where 'boat' sails all the time!

[Catigale]

Im sure I would be off the paddle board if that happened to me.

[Doug W]

terrified of being one of the 99.997% idiots (at least when it comes to anchoring), I've avoided most situations where I'm sharing an anchorage with others on the hook unless we are the first onsite with the anchor set. The couple times I've entered an anchorage while traveling unknown waters and I needed to set an anchor, we have opted to set as shallow as possible and as far away as possible and study the lay of everyone else's anchor lines to try to mimic them.

I dread the day that my anchor drags and we are near someone's $100000 boat!

Also, we seem to swing back and forth a lot at anchor--more so than heavier keel boats. (anyone have any tips to lessen that? Storm sail? Snubber on anchor line and bow-ring? More Rum so that I don't care?)

Doug