What's The Strangest Thing Your Anchor Picked Up?

[longtermcruiser]

A wwii gas pipeline with gas in it!
This happened in Majuro (marshall islands).
The wind had picked up and the pressure had dropped so we decided to move across the lagoon. As the windlass strained, the waves turned yellow and a strong smell of gasoline took over. We buoyed the anchor and left. A few days later we returned and had a friend dive on the anchor (55'). The CQR had wrapped itself around an old rubber covered pipeline, uncharted of course.

[s/v Jedi]

After riding out a hurricane in the Canaveral Barge Canal, we recovered our Fortress stern anchor to find it had a whole palm tree stuck to it.

[Enfant Du Vent]

Post #12 in this thread ends with, "The entire adventure took most of all day, with some 20 odd sailors involved."

Do you suppose it wouldn't have taken "most of all day" if the sailors hadn't been "odd"?

[Simi 60]

Shoalwater bay in QLD Australia is a relatively remote military training area

Many years ago we had our anchor snagged and after much effort got it back with a hessian bag, weighed down with several brass shell casings from big cannon type things (Australia, we don't know guns) held together with swagged wire.

Dropped it, couldn't hold it
Nothing to see here, move along.

[nuku34]

Hi Jim and Ann,
A few years ago, Betelgeuse (Cavalier 32) anchored at "Anchorage" in Abel Tasman Park, an unexpected very strong and gusty Westerly came over the hills just an hour before dusk. 25 then 30, then 35+kts with a 1/2 mile fetch between us and the Western shore. Its fairly shallow in that bay and we shortly had 1-2m waves and started dragging toward the rocks on the Eastern side, about 40m away. Started the Bukh and motored forward while picking up the chain. When the anchor came up it had a pair of XXX large men's underwear wrapped around the toe of the anchor.


BTW, we had our second cruise on our Aden 46 Arctic Loon. 10 days in the Sounds. Very cold but the Wabasco heater kept us happy. We ad the place pretty much to ourselves. The 85hp turbo Nani powered us through French Pass against a 3kt current so we could get back to Nelson before midnight. She's a fantastic boat. Might have a buyer for Betelgeuse too.
Cheers, Sandy

[CaptTom]

My first named boat was Betelgeuse. It was a great name until "that" movie came out and ruined it as an astronomical reference.

Maybe not a strange thing, but an interesting story. Late in the evening we finally found a place to anchor in a small embayment along the Tenn-Tom waterway. Nice little spot, if a bit tight. At 2AM I got that familiar "uh-oh" feeling. The wind had shifted and stiffened, and we were dragging.

Struggled to get the anchor up, and when it broke the surface all we saw was was a giant ball of brush and sticks, about twice the size of the anchor itself. We tied off to a nearby moored barge and tried to get a few hours' sleep.

We were up at first light, expecting to be kicked off the barge by some irate tugboat operator. As we got underway we noticed a big sign on the other side of the embayment.

That side was home to a landscaping company. Apparently the way they disposed of the yard waste they generated was to dump it into the embayment.

[hpeer]

A plastic reinforced table cloth. Damn near wrecked me.

[grnoles2]

One time in No Name Harbor Key Biscayne FL I picked up a beach chair.

[noelex 77]

Our anchor once dug up an amphora while setting. These were used to transport wine and olives. Strange to think of another seafarer dropping or discarding this more than a millennia ago or more likely a ship being wrecked. It has probably been unseen by other humans in all this time.

We tried carefully to avoid damaging it when retrieving the anchor.

It was not raised to surface, but left in place to rest in peace.

[ABJ87]

Our old Bruce had a tendency to pickup large round stones in the flukes, which made retrieving interesting.

[AKA-None]

We picked up an entire tree about 30-40 ft tall when growing
That took some time with 3 of us hauling
Luckily we could get it to swing and the tree fell off

[David Mathis]

We anchored to watch a beach concert. It was a nice evening with a gentle breeze and we intended to leave when the music ended so setting the anchor wasn't a concern, we just dropped it and let out about a 4:1 rode in 8'-9' of water. Retrieving the anchor shouldn't have been a problem but the windlass was grunting then stopped just as the Bruce reached the surface. We could see something black but a closer exam was needed before we determined we had hooked a telephone cable. A trip line was then attached to the anchor which let us pull up the other end of the anchor to allow the phone cable to go back to the bottom. The "Do Not Anchor" sign was later located behind some bushes where, due to the posts rotting away, it was laying in a position where it could have been see from an aircraft but not by boaters. As of last summer, about ten years after the incident, the "Do Not Anchor" sign had not been replaced.

[Franziska]

We once pulled up our 10kg Kobra in the industrial port of Yalta, Crimea, Ukraine (10 years before that crazy war started).

It was suddenly SUPER heavy and the two of us had a very hard time lifting it hand over hand. Much tour surprised we brought a very old 30kg Admirality anchor back up with it. Looked very pittoresque with a lot of barnacles on it.

We gave it to one of the local tour operators as a display piece.

[sailorboy1]

wow, all I can think of is and old heavy chain (that was a challenge getting the anchor up with) and a fishing line with 3 fish on it

[ejs]

An entire trash bag of diapers, kept the anchor from setting at all. A shopping cart and an old truck tire. We also saw someone else bring up a tricycle. All in Pago Pago , 7 years after the tsunami in 2009.