Anchoring Tips & Safety Guides

Expert advice on safe anchoring, seamanship, and getting the most out of your time on the water.

MaintenanceAugust 20, 2026•11 min read

How to Winterize an Outboard Motor: the Two Things That Actually Kill It

An outboard is not a small inboard. Almost all winter damage comes from two things — water that cannot drain out, and fuel that degrades where it sits. The order the jobs go in and why it matters, the storage rule that cracks castings when people get it wrong, what the gear oil is telling you (and the fishing line behind the propeller that usually caused it), and where two-stroke and four-stroke part company.

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Anchoring

The method, the mistakes, and the hours you are asleep on it.

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Seamanship13 min read

Med Mooring: How to Go Stern-To Without Losing the Bow

Med mooring is anchoring, and everyone judges it as docking — every eye is on the stern while the thing holding the boat is forty metres away at the other end. The manoeuvre in six stages with the failure and the tell at each one, the three different things people call Med mooring, how far out to drop and why too close is unrecoverable, crossed chains, and why the alarm you want on a quay is a creep alarm rather than a swing alarm.

August 7, 2026

Equipment12 min read

Anchoring With a Windlass: How to Use One Without Breaking It

A windlass is a lifting machine, not an anchoring machine — and almost every expensive failure comes from asking it to do one of three jobs that belong to the engine, the chain stopper or the snubber. The drop, the handover and the recovery step by step, the current draw and duty cycle that explain the technique, why chain jumps the gypsy, what to do when the windlass dies, and why your chain counter is a guess with a decimal point.

August 1, 2026

Guide14 min read

How to Anchor a Boat: The Complete Step-by-Step Guide

Anchoring is not one action but five checkpoints — spot, scope, lay, set, watch — and every one of them has a pass/fail test. The complete guide to anchoring a boat: choosing the spot, calculating scope, laying the chain, power-setting, and verifying the hold before you relax, plus the mistakes behind almost all dragging.

July 26, 2026

Guide8 min read

How Far Apart Should Boats Anchor? Swing Room, Spacing & the Unwritten Rules

Far enough that their swing circles never overlap. How to work out your swinging radius, a depth-by-depth spacing table (two 12 m boats on 5:1 in 5 m need ~75 m between anchors), who carries the responsibility when boats swing together, and why same-size boats still swing differently.

July 18, 2026

Guide11 min read

Anchor Scope Explained: The 7:1 Rule & Chain Length Formula

What anchor scope really means, the 7:1 rule, and the formula to calculate how much chain or rode you need at any depth — plus why it depends on depth, not boat length.

June 29, 2026

Safety9 min read

Night Anchoring Safety: 10 Tips Every Sailor Needs to Know

Night anchoring demands extra caution. Learn 10 essential safety tips for anchoring after dark — from choosing the right spot with limited visibility to setting up reliable overnight monitoring.

February 20, 2026

Gear & Apps

Anchors, windlasses, chartplotters and what to trust to watch the boat.

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Comparison10 min read

Keeping an Anchor Watch by GPS: What a Phone Does Better Than a Person

The anchor watch is a duty, not a device — and a GPS app is just another way of keeping it. Where a phone beats a human watchkeeper (attention that does not fade, position instead of guesswork, an alert that reaches a sleeping crew), where it is no use at all (weather, the neighbour dragging down on you, a chafing snubber), and how to set the watch so it is worth trusting.

August 17, 2026

Comparison9 min read

Chartplotter Anchor Alarm vs Anchor Alarm App: Garmin, Raymarine & B&G Compared (2026)

Garmin, Raymarine and B&G chartplotters all ship an anchor alarm — so is a phone app redundant? Where each plotter hides the setting, why the alarm circle is centred on the boat instead of the anchor, and the primary-plus-backup setup most cruisers run.

July 12, 2026

Comparison8 min read

Navionics Anchor Alarm: Does It Exist? What to Use Instead (2026)

The Navionics Boating app has no built-in anchor alarm — the Anchor Drag alarm people search for lives on Garmin chartplotters. Where the confusion comes from, why the track workaround can't wake you, and the chart-app + alarm-app setup most cruisers run.

July 11, 2026

Reviews11 min read

10 Best Sailing Apps Every Sailor Needs in 2026

You don't need thirty apps — you need one great app for each job at sea. The essential toolkit organised by job: charts, weather, anchorages, anchor alarm, tides, AIS, routing and safety tracking.

July 9, 2026

Guide9 min read

Anchor Alarm on Apple Watch: Watch Your Boat From Your Wrist

See your anchor safe radius and distance from the anchor right on your Apple Watch. How a wrist-based anchor alarm works, how to read it at 3 a.m., and why it's the quietest way to keep watch overnight.

July 2, 2026

Guide11 min read

GPS Accuracy for Anchor Alarms Explained: Drift, False Alarms & Radius

How accurate is phone GPS for anchor monitoring? Understand the difference between harmless GPS drift and real dragging, why anchor alarms false-trigger, and how to set your alarm radius so it only wakes you when it matters.

June 30, 2026

Rules & Regulations

Where you may anchor, what it costs, and what you must show after dark.

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Rules14 min read

Boat Navigation Lights Explained: Red, Green, White & What to Show

Navigation lights aren't there so you can see — they're a sentence you write to another boat. What the red and green lights mean, why the arcs are 112.5°, 225° and 135° (they tile a circle), the visibility ranges by boat length, exactly what to show under power, under sail and at anchor, and the five mistakes made by boats whose lights are working perfectly.

July 29, 2026

Regulations10 min read

Anchoring Rules in the Mediterranean: Posidonia Bans, Permits & Fees by Country

The Med's anchoring rules, country by country — where Posidonia seagrass makes anchoring illegal (fines up to €600,000 in the Balearics), what Croatia's vinjeta and Turkey's Blue Card actually require, which buoy fields are mandatory, and the mid-June-to-mid-September window when the rules bite hardest.

July 16, 2026

Regulations9 min read

Can You Anchor a Boat Anywhere? Where Anchoring Is Free — and Where It Isn't

In most of the world anchoring is free — but not anywhere. Where the right to anchor comes from, the six places it never applies, a country-by-country table of what's free and what costs money, and the Mediterranean seagrass fines that reach six figures.

July 15, 2026

Regulations13 min read

Overnight Anchoring Rules by Region: Mediterranean, Caribbean & Beyond (2025)

A region-by-region guide to overnight anchoring rules for sailors — covering Turkey, Greece, Croatia, Spain, France, Italy, and the Caribbean. Know the rules before you drop the hook.

February 28, 2026

Seamanship & Maintenance

The wider craft — knots, checklists, sail trim, lay-up and what a boat costs.

All 10 articles →
Maintenance11 min read

How to Winterize an Outboard Motor: the Two Things That Actually Kill It

An outboard is not a small inboard. Almost all winter damage comes from two things — water that cannot drain out, and fuel that degrades where it sits. The order the jobs go in and why it matters, the storage rule that cracks castings when people get it wrong, what the gear oil is telling you (and the fishing line behind the propeller that usually caused it), and where two-stroke and four-stroke part company.

August 20, 2026

Maintenance14 min read

How to Winterize a Boat: the Checklist, and Why Warm Climates Need It Too

Almost everything written about winterizing is written for a boat that will freeze — which is why owners in the Med skim it and decide it doesn't apply. It mostly does. Winterizing is about water that has nowhere to go, and only one of the three ways water wrecks a laid-up boat involves frost. The list split by climate, why the oil change goes before storage rather than after, the fuel step people miss, and the ventilation mistake that grows mould under a perfect cover.

August 11, 2026

Seamanship12 min read

Points of Sail Explained: the Angles, the Diagram and the One Rule of Trim

The points of sail aren't eight names to memorise — they're one continuous variable, the angle between your bow and the wind, and everything else on the boat is a function of it. A diagram with the angles marked, what each point feels like and how it goes wrong, the single trim rule that replaces memorising sail positions, and the diagnosis that tells you whether the problem is the angle or the sheet.

August 8, 2026

Cruising Life13 min read

The Cost of Living on a Sailboat: The Three Budgets Nobody Separates

Every answer to this question is a monthly figure, and the monthly figure is the wrong number — it averages a year in which nothing big broke. The three buckets a liveaboard budget actually has, the 10% rule that dominates all of them, why where you sleep swings the annual total by a factor of two or three, and an indexed comparison of marina, mixed and anchor-out living.

August 6, 2026

Seamanship13 min read

Essential Sailing Knots: The Six That Matter — and the Knots for Anchoring

Every knot in the book holds — that isn't the hard part. On a boat the question is whether you can get it off again after twelve hours of load, in the dark, one-handed. The working set organised by job, the full anchoring set from anchor bend to bitter end, what a knot costs you in line strength, and the five ways knots actually fail. With a save-and-pin reference card.

August 3, 2026

Reference18 min read

Sailing Terms Glossary: 199 Nautical Words Explained (A–Z)

Every sailing and boating term you are likely to meet on a charter, in a pilot book or in a forecast — defined in one or two sentences, A to Z. Plus the table that matters most: the dozen near-identical pairs sailors mix up, from port and windward to rope, line, rode and warp, and why each distinction changes what you actually do.

July 27, 2026

Sailing Itineraries

Day-by-day cruises with route maps, distances and verified anchorages.

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Itinerary13 min read

4-Day Gulf of Naples Sailing Itinerary: Procida, Ischia & Capri

Three volcanic islands, a Roman town on the seabed and the busiest recreational water in Italy — the one cruising ground where you plan around neither the weather nor the rulebook but other boats. The 62 nm circuit out of Baia day by day, with a numbered route map, verified depths, holding and alarm radii, why Capri is lunch rather than a night, and why widening the alarm to stop ferry-wash false triggers is the wrong fix.

August 9, 2026

Itinerary14 min read

7-Day Aeolian Islands Sailing Itinerary: Lipari, Filicudi, Panarea & Stromboli

Seven volcanic islands across forty miles of open Tyrrhenian Sea, one still erupting every twenty minutes — and not a single all-weather anchorage among them. The full 114 nm loop day by day, with a numbered route map, every stop's shelter sector and the move to make when the wind goes the wrong way, verified depths and holding, why the alarm radius climbs from 80 m to 120 m as you sail west, and where you must never anchor on Stromboli.

August 5, 2026

Itinerary13 min read

5-Day La Maddalena Sailing Itinerary: Palau, Caprera, Spargi & Budelli

The finest short cruise in Italy, day by day — out of Palau to a park buoy under Caprera, round Punta Rossa to the pink granite of Cala Coticcio, the Maestrale bolthole at Spargi, a beach on Budelli you are forbidden to touch, and a night in the lagoon between three islands — with a numbered route map, the national park's permit and Zone A/B/C rules, the bridge that blocks the Maddalena–Caprera channel, and why the alarm radius on a mooring buoy is 40 metres.

July 29, 2026

Itinerary12 min read

3-Day Calanques Sailing Itinerary: Marseille, Sormiou, En-Vau & Cassis

The most dramatic short cruise in France, day by day — out of Marseille's Vieux Port to a night on good sand in Sormiou, the calanque crawl past Morgiou and Sugiton to the forbidden pool of En-Vau, a fjord bedroom at Port-Miou and coffee under France's highest sea cliff at Cassis — with a numbered route map, the national park's anchoring bans and speed limits, Mistral rafale warnings, and the anchor alarm radius to set in every calanque.

July 22, 2026

Itinerary11 min read

3-Day Côte d'Azur Sailing Itinerary: Saint-Tropez, the Esterel & Îles de Lérins

The glamour coast, day by day — Saint-Tropez and Pampelonne, the red porphyry cliffs of the Esterel, a lunch stop at Théoule and a night at anchor off the Man in the Iron Mask's island — with a numbered route map, daily distances, verified anchorages, Mistral and Posidonia notes, and the anchor alarm radius to set at every stop.

July 14, 2026

Itinerary14 min read

7-Day BVI Sailing Itinerary: Norman Island, The Baths, Anegada & Jost Van Dyke

The classic British Virgin Islands loop, day by day — Road Town to Norman Island, The Baths, North Sound, the open-water run to Anegada, Cane Garden Bay, Jost Van Dyke and Soper's Hole — with a numbered route map, daily distances, verified anchorages, mooring-ball and reef notes, and the anchor alarm radius to set at every stop.

July 11, 2026

Where to Anchor

Country and region guides to the anchorages worth the detour.

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Destination Guide16 min read

Best Anchorages in the UK & Ireland: The Solent, Cornwall, Scotland & the Irish Coast

Where to anchor in the UK and Ireland — Newtown Creek and Studland in the Solent, the Helford and Salcombe in the West Country, Tobermory and the Hebrides in Scotland, and Ireland's Atlantic southwest from Baltimore to the Aran Islands — with tidal-range notes and the anchoring rules that make these waters refreshingly free.

July 20, 2026

Destination Guide16 min read

Best Anchorages in Spain: Mallorca, Menorca, Ibiza, the Costas & Galicia

Where to anchor in Spain — the Balearics (Cala Macarella, Port de Sóller, Es Vedrà, S'Espalmador), the Costa Brava, Costa Blanca, Cabo de Gata and the permit-guarded Cíes Islands in Galicia, with Posidonia buoy zones, Tramuntana shelter notes, and Spanish anchoring rules.

July 13, 2026

Destination Guide17 min read

Best Anchorages in France: Calanques, Corsica, Côte d'Azur & the Atlantic Coast

Where to anchor in France — the Calanques, Côte d'Azur, the Hyères islands, Corsica, Brittany and the Atlantic islands, with Mistral shelter notes, Posidonia rules, and how anchoring changes on a tidal coast.

July 10, 2026

Destination Guide18 min read

Best Anchorages in Italy: Sardinia, the Aeolians, Amalfi & the Tuscan Archipelago

Where to anchor in Italy — Sardinia, the Aeolian and Pontine islands, the Tuscan archipelago, Amalfi and Capri, with honest holding notes, Maestrale and Bora shelter, and how the marine protected area rules work.

July 10, 2026

Destination Guide16 min read

Best Anchorages in Croatia: The Kornati, Hvar, Vis & the Dalmatian Islands

Where to anchor in Croatia — the Kornati, Telašćica, Hvar and the Pakleni, Vis, Mljet and the Elafiti, with Bura shelter notes, cruising permit and park fees, and where the buoys have replaced free anchoring.

July 10, 2026

Destination Guide16 min read

Best Anchorages in Greece: A Cruiser's Guide to the Ionian, Cyclades & Beyond

Where to anchor in Greece — the best bays of the Ionian, Saronic Gulf, Cyclades, Dodecanese, Sporades and the Peloponnese, with meltemi shelter notes, holding, and Greek anchoring rules.

July 4, 2026

Never Miss an Anchor Dragging

Safety Anchor Alarm monitors your boat's position and alerts you instantly if something goes wrong. Download free for iOS.

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