The Art of Anchoring

At anchor. Tromlingane off Arendal, south coast.

Concerning seamanship, I should be the last person to write about the secrets of safe and proper anchoring. Therefore, if you wish to know for sure how to let go your anchor, please look elsewhere (e.g. over here or here). Normally I just throw the whole bundle of old mooring gear over board in a hurry – hoping for the best. Most often this works just fine, at least to start with. In the end it results in a naked man – running around on deck in the middle of the night, trying to tow the boat in one direction or the other. Why I always have to do this and not my wife, I don’t really know, but even in Scandinavia, women’s lib still has its limits, I guess.

Rossøysund at dusk. Ryfylke.

But there is fare more to say about anchoring than right and wrong practise in the more technical sense. First, like a whole lot of nautical operations, objects and phenomenon, the anchor has gained a strong metaphoric significance even on dry land, and is used figuratively in many situations and spheres of life. Of course this is widely known, and since I do not wish to place myself in an academic doghouse, I won’t expand on it here. Instead I wish to take a strictly personal stand. Opposed to running in a fast-moving motorboat, the joys of being under way is emphasised by many as the core of pleasure sailing. I don’t disagree in this, but all the same. After a long and maybe rough sailing leg, after hours and hours at the helm, nothing is more satisfying than coming to anchor in a safe and calm bay. In chapter IV of “The Mirror of the Sea”, the world known writer and sea captain Joseph Conrad, stresses let go the anchor to be the proper term. In spite this old master of words, I cast my old bundle over board like always. Happy I am. Here we are at last!

No hurry, no worries. The Brekkestø skerries, south coast. 

A respectable distance run has it’s own ways, values and delights, but is also a precondition for the satisfaction felt when arriving. First of course, you have to put this and that straight again on the boat. Then it’s time to calm down, to get the cooker going and, if the day isn’t over yet, mend some gear, read a book, take a stroll ashore, light a fire at the water's edge or just settle down in the cockpit, chatting little or less with your crew while the darkness slowly comes creeping under a still blushing, northern sky. No hurry, no worries or anxiety seems to be left in this part of the world, in this blessed archipelago of sounds and fjords. At last it’s time to turn in – hoping for the best.