Wow....so far three pages of Anchor porn....love it.
A fishfinder can tell you loads about your anchor position and the bottom environment. ...
Al, next time you ride the Coot (sometime in March or April for a boys' day-trip to Martinez?), I'd like to pick your brain on interpreting the readings on my Garmin fishfinder.
Mine is free fall only for right now (the OP used it that way for 24 years and me for 4)....hard to keep REAL smooth unless the clutch is perfect...but I never worry about a too big of pile of chain while freefalling.
Never have to worry either about getting the anchor down REAL fast in deep water during an emergency.
psn,
I think you would find a good marine sparky would be able to wire your winch to be power up and down. My old original Nilson was power up only, (before I bough it), but the PO had had it converted. I only found this out reletively recently when the thing started to get a bit temporamental, and needed a recon of the brushes etc. The guy who did it said, "oh, yes, I remember this winch. I added in the power down function".
My Muir is freefall too. It occurs to me that powered payout may enable a skipper to match freefall to the boat moving back from the initial drop position..