It was a pleasant day in mid-May in the Florida Keys. We were fishing for tarpon with Captain Bruce Stagg on the flats outside of Islamorada, and when things slowed down, Bruce suggested moving to some deep water channels where he would stake out the boat. Instead of cruising the flats looking for fish, we’d wait for some fish to move up the channel to us.
How deep was “deep”? About 12 feet.
In our current environment, it’s rare that we fish in water as shallow as 12 feet. For the most part, we are trolling or drifting over water that is dozens, if not hundreds of fathoms deep. When we do anchor, our usual depth is more like 45 – 90 feet.
One of the things which discourages skiff fishermen from dropping the hook in water this deep is having to retrieve the anchor. If you set up with a scope of 3:1 (pretty standard in most situations), you might have to haul your anchor and chain close to the length of a football field before you get them back to the boat. That’s a lot of work if you don’t have a winch!
What are your alternatives?
The most obvious one is: don’t anchor if you don’t have to! Drift fish, using the motor or a sea anchor to slow your pace and get better control. Now that bow-mount electric motors with GPS sensors are becoming commonplace on bigger skiffs, some people are using them to “hover” in position instead of anchoring (this has the added benefit of not attracting seals, which have learned to home in on the sound of an anchor and chain being dropped).
But sometimes you can’t drift – like when you’re in a crowd, near dangerous shoals or the drift angle or speed is wrong. And not everyone (i.e. us) have the coin or the room for a GPS-enabled electric motor.
Under these conditions, we pull out the anchor. And, after struggling to pull our 14 lb. Lewmar Delta Fastset with 25′ of chain from 200 feet a few times, we started looking for a better way to haul the hook.
We’ve settled on using an anchor lift ring and float. This is a very simple device that can be use to effectively lift almost any weight anchor up almost any distance, and makes hand retrieval of the anchor rode a piece of cake.
This technique has been around for a long time – we first read about it in a Salt Water Sportsman article from the 1970s, but we’re sure it’s been around much longer than that. It’s such a simple and effective technique that we’re surprised more people don’t use it. Perhaps it is because there are a couple of nuances that can cause trouble if you’re not aware of them. Or maybe it’s because of the difficulty in storing the float.
How an Anchor Lift Ring Works
The anchor lift ring rig consists of a 12″ or 15″ diameter round fender, attached to a short painter, which in turn is attached by a carabiner to a 6″ diameter stainless steel ring. The ring is open on one side, and can be slipped over the anchor rode. The carabiner is used to close the ring.
Basically, the boat is used to pull the anchor and chain off the bottom. The float and ring are used to change the angle of the rode so that the anchor is lifted up, instead of being pulled sideways when the boat drives off.
To use this rig:
- The carabiner is removed, and the ring slipped over the anchor line
- The carabiner is replaced to lock the ring onto the rode. The float and ring are tossed into the water
- The boat is driven off at a 45 degree angle to the rode. The boat pulls the rode up through the ring. The float changes the angle of the rode so that the anchor and chain are lifted more or less straight up towards the ring, instead of being dragged sideways
- Eventually, the anchor chain makes its way through the ring, followed by the anchor stock
- Once the anchor stock is in the ring, tension can be removed from the rode. The weight of the chain keeps the anchor from falling back, and the float raises the anchor and chain to the surface
- At this point, the person tending the anchor just has to pull the rode in to the boat
- Once on board, the ring is removed from the rode, and the anchor is ready to deploy again
One perennial problem with this technique is stowing the round float. We started out tucking it under the bow rail, where it was mostly out of the way, but more recently we managed to free up enough space in the front storage locker to keep it there. We have not tried a regular cylindrical fender, but that might be easier to stow.
Sounds simple, eh? And it is. But like many simple things, there are a few “gotchas” that you need to be aware of, in order to avoid some frustration.
What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
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Not enough scope:NEVER, EVER try to deploy this rig if you do not have at least 2:1 scope (or more) on your anchor line. If you don’t have enough scope, the anchor line will be too vertical. In this situation, the float and anchor line will get pulled under the boat and into the prop as you drive off, with the obvious disastrous results.
To date, we have chewed up one float, and severed the float painter once doing just that. Fortunately, we were able to recover the ring both times, since the carabiner kept the ring on the rode. If you do not see the rode off to the side of the boat initially when you drive off, STOP and let out some more line before taking off
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Not driving off at the right angle:
The boat has to be driven off at a 45 degree angle to the rode. Again, this prevents the rode from being pulled under the boat.
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Not pulling the anchor stock into the ring:
This was the biggest problem we had initially, and it took us a while to figure out what the cause was. It turns out that the main problem was using a shackle to connect the rode to the chain. If you use a shackle to connect your anchor rode to the chain, the shackle will often get caught on the ring. If that happens, you will not be able to pull the chain through the ring any further, and when you stop, the chain and the anchor will fall back to the bottom.
We got around this by splicing the rode directly to the anchor chain. This produces a nice, smooth junction between the rode and the chain. We opted for creating the absolute smallest profile eye splice, so we did not include a thimble to guard against chafing. We were concerned that the extra bulk of the thimble might prevent the chain from making it through the ring again, but in retrospect, we were probably being too paranoid.
In any event, we regularly check the current splice for chafing, and will try the thimble when we have to replace the eye splice. The shackle connecting the chain to the anchor can also get stuck in the ring, but we’ve found that if that occurs, the weight of the anchor chain is usually sufficient to prevent the anchor from falling back.
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Not enough room to drive forward:
You need a considerable distance in front of the boat in order to do this right. If you are in a tight anchorage, you might not be able to get enough scope and / or be able to run far enough forward to lift the anchor to the float.
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Stopping too soon:
If you stop before the anchor stock seats in the ring, most of the time the anchor will simply fall back to the bottom, dragging the rope back down with it. You can tell this is happening because you will see the float move towards the boat after you stop.
The only exception will be the occasions when you manage to pull a short length of the chain through the ring. When this happens, the chain that went through the ring may be heavy enough to keep the anchor from falling back when tension is removed.
How do you know when to stop? On Toy Boat 2, the float will drag forward a bit when we start, and occasionally disappear briefly below the surface. When the anchor makes it into the ring, the float and anchor dive under the surface, and stay under. When you stop the boat, the float will resurface with the anchor.
There is a caveat to this – you can sometimes get the same effect if the anchor chain gets stuck before it goes through the ring (see the third point above).
If your anchor is stuck in the bottom, this rig may help get the anchor out, because it is pulling in a slightly different direction than the anchor was originally set in. If necessary, you can also pull from a completely different direction using this rig, just like you would if you did not have this rig attached.
But you do need to be careful! Driving off too fast with the anchor stuck on a rock could potentially cause your boat to flip or swamp.
Parting Thoughts
We’ve found anchor lift rings to be a big help that comes at minimal cost. We no longer dread deep-water anchoring – or maybe we should say “We don’t dread it as much as we used to!” Let’s not kid ourselves – pulling in 300+ feet of wet rope + anchor + chain is no fun under any condition. At least now it’s reduced to a boring process, as opposed to hard work.
The companies manufacturing these rings have changed a couple of times over the years. The name that seems to pop up the most on Internet searches right now is Ironwood Pacific Marine. Their version of the anchor lift ring/buoy is available from a number of sources, and West Marine also sells a version under their store brand.