What do you do in this case….

[Sailingallday]

Fun bit of a brain teaser for you all.

Scenario

You have been anchored in a spot for a week. It’s a popular location, near a major city but there is only room for about six boats. You are planning to leave the following morning.

By late evening, the anchorage is full, but one more boat has decided he must anchor there and ends up anchoring beside you. Much too close and you go out on deck to tell him he is too close. Like all these sorts of idiots everywhere, he disagrees and makes excuses why he must anchor there and nowhere else. You grin and bear it because you will be leaving in the morning and it’s supposed to be a calm night.

After he is done anchoring, he drops his dinghy and leaves.

Morning rolls around and you get up to start to depart. There is no wind at all, but tide and currents have now swung the boats and the new boat is positioned directly over the path of your anchor. You slowly start pulling your anchor up, but the only way it’s going to come up is by getting over top of it, and his boat is in the way. His dinghy is still gone and he is not on his boat.

What do you do? Wait for his return? Drop your dinghy and push his boat out of the way? All the pulling in the world won’t move your anchor out from under his boat.

Thoughts? Ideas?

And yes, in hindsight, allowing the anchoring close the night before was not right but too late to change that now.

[AnsleyS]

Since we have no control over what others do nor do we have any control of others abilities, we must deal with that over which we have some control. You made your objections known to them when they anchored and they disagreed with your position and left the boat unattended. I would have done one of two things in the morning. First, if you have adequate people aboard to do an anchor drill and man the dinghy then you could have folks in the dinghy "tug boat" the other boat out of the way as you move to up anchor or the other possibility is to rig fenders and up anchor and just push them out of the way.

[Chotu]

to avoid difficulties and potential serious confrontations, I would involve the harbormaster.

that way when the boat is moved to the side or whatever needs to be done, it was done within the law and customs of your location.

[S/V Illusion]

A quick call on the radio should elicit lots of volunteers to move his boat out of the way. We’ve all been treated to jerks like this guy and everyone can empathize with your dilemma and be willing to help “educate” the guy.

[TeddyDiver]

I would have left already in the evening when he arrived. There's no point to keep the place occupied longer than needed and I enjoy night sailing.. In case I'd been asleep when the other boat anchored, I motor behind slowly to other side of the other boat to get my rode up and go without a fuss.

[Kettlewell]

If it is calm enough just pull in your anchor chain until you are close. Have a couple of fenders out on one side and slowly push their boat away from yours as you pull forward. Been there, done that.

[Shrew]

I absolutely hate this situation. That guy is a complete A-hole. I would have looked at the wind direction for the morning. It it looked like he was going to be on top of your anchor, I would mention that to him at the time.

Since we drag our tender behind us, I would have had my wife take the tender and use it like a tug and push the guy out of the way.

We've also asked passers-by to do the same.

Depending on how close, we've pulled in scope until we're right on top of the person, then throw the boat in reverse and drag the anchor out from under them. Then finish pulling it in.