Nomad Willy
Guru
When I was considering ordering a new fangled, whiz-bang modern anchor, the owner of a store in Prince Rupert listened quite patiently about new anchor designs, then nodded toward his extensive array of cheap galvanized Lewmar Claws and said, "Yeah, well, I get a lot of repeat customers".
I pondered that for a while, then bought the next size up Lewmar Claw that was already on our boat.
You just have to see any bay or estuary in this area at an extremely low tide to understand what he meant...there are stumps, root wads, logs, and/or whole trees laying on the bottom all over the place.
Still, I intend to get a modern storm anchor before we start exploring BC's north coast in the winter months, which should be next year, but it sure won't be used on a regular basis!
Murray,
Yup .... just like Marin you'd probably be fine w just a bigger Claw. What size Claw do you have? We both have boats the same size and I'd consider a 33lb Claw good for 99% of anchoring situations in your area. I bought a Claw when we went to Alaska on our previous boat thinking that design would be great on a rocky bottom. But my more recent experience has shown most bottoms up north are some variation of mud and rocky bottoms are somewhat unusual. The other advantages of the Claw you will also find a plus ... in your area.
But a 44lb Claw on our boats would probably take care of the other 10% and it's only 10lbs more ....
Another thought would be to use a Fortress as a primary and a Claw for rocky bottoms. A 23lb Fortress would probably hold us in an 80 knot gale and it would be easily hand launched and retrieved thus no winch would be required. Perhaps a 15lb Fortress would work just as well in 99% of our anchoring.
In other words we could anchor just like we anchored 22 and 25' boats w/o all the complication, weight and expense of most trawlers.