First anchor...

 ...and about bleeding time..

I've had boats for about 6 or 7 years now but have never really anchored.. I had a small grapnel kedge anchor (in fact I ended up owning two ) on Pap that I used to occasionally chuck over the back in the hope that I would have a few moments of peace, but which invariably dragged.

Despite proper anchors on both boats I've never got around to lowering them to the sea bed, so a sunny day and little wind and I thought I could either go home, or enjoy the time on the water - 20' in October and wall to wall blue sky, so it seemed a waste to go home, and then I thought, "I know what"..

Motored down to just north of Mengham Rythe, scrambled through the cabin and rootled out the anchor (a cheap and cheerful Danforth - pretty much like the graphic top left) - it had about 5 or 6 mtrs of good quality chain, but I had to further rootle around in cockpit locker to find an additional length of rope to extend it..

Steve contemplates anchoring ...

I had in mind to anchor off the seal colony and as I motored past noticed that there were at least 10 or a dozen there..  motored in between two of the channel markers and dropped anchor just outside the channel (not that I would have been in the way if I'd dropped it in the channel - I didn't see more than 3 boats all morning!) - couldn't see bottom but I guess there was about 3 or 4 mtrs, let out enough scope to make 3 times that (didn't need any more) took a couple of transits and settled down with a coffee to watch the (seal) entertainment..  which was brilliant, as I seemed to have arrived at dinner time and the fish were jumping...

Excuse the crappy rope..!

Half an hour later (still in the same spot) a vague whisper of a breeze had come up so anchor and main hoisted and I went for a slow drift.. wind died again, and with an hour of tide left I headed for home...

..not often you get a day on the water in a yacht, where there is no wind,but you have as good a time as that...

...so there I was stowing the anchor, and assorted other gubbins that seems to accumulate on the cabin floor when you go sailing, and I keep hearing this knocking on the hull, soft, but knocking nonetheless...  put my head up through the companion way to see what it was and look over the side, and see this..  no wonder the seals are so numerous...clearly there's a bit of growth on Sparrow's bottom... 

Log:

Distance: 8.5 miles (cumulative total in the mileage tab at the top of the page)
Wind: F1 gusting F2, direction NW, going W almost immediately, and ending up SW!
Sail Plan: Full main and genoa - engine to manoeuvre and get back to the mooring...
Speed: GPS track says the max speed was 4.3 knots (which would have been under motor) - average speed 2.4 knots