Anchoring with Propwalk on a Sailboat

Without proper knowledge of how the boat reacts to the wind and propwalk, anchoring can be a real challenge. But forewarned is forearmed.

You know that the wind wants to push the bow down and you know that the propwalk likes to initially take over and shift the stern sideways.

When anchoring, you drop the hook facing into the wind and then reverse backward. The trick is to get the boat going backward and reversing downwind as best you can without the wind and propwalk doing their thing on you.

So again, you’re going to do a preemptive strike on the prop walk but you have to gauge how much angle you’re going to start with else a strong wind might overpower the propwalk and push you around the other way. If you angle too little you’ll end up looking like the skipper on the right below.

Here below, we assume a right-hand screw. The skipper on the left correctly predicts how much preemptive strike to give. Drops the hook and backs downwind. The skipper on the right allows the wind to overtake the bow and push the bow downwind all the while the propwalk is moving the stern to part. The skipper on the left is now you whereas the skipper on the right is an amateur. 

This little tip was thanks to Marc Hughston of Santana Sailing School in Longbeach, Ca.