I head out of Chichester Marina to try to spend the night at Pilsey Island in Chichester Harbour
Goal was to build experience with thei new-to-me 1985 Moody 31
This was me on my own, so my first solo anchor ever, as well as my first anchor on this boat... and with 16 hours of darkness ahead of me at this time of year
I focussed too much on worrying about grounding - I have a bilge keel so that's not a problem and the boat would have stood on her keels if Ihad grounded her
I did not spend enough time worrying about whether I had enough chain, and the height the tide would get even though I was close in to the island shore. The yacht only has 25m of chain and, as you can see, this is clearly not enough. I will now buy 50m of new chain to give me more choices for safe anchoring.
I gave up at around 10.30pm at night when the anchor was dragging in light winds but quite a fast current, an hour before high tide was due, and did a late night and very dark slow chug back to the marina, finally mooring at my berth approaching midnight.
As usual, this is warts and all - learn from my mistakes!