Welcome back to Cowell Island, New Zealand, our home base for the Southern Hemisphere
Summers. This kind of a boat is not motor-dependent. You can row with this in
quite strong winds and even a reasonable sea. So you can catch out an anchor in a
fairly strong wind condition, say up to 30 knots of wind. And it could save your
boat some time if you go aground inadvertently and with the real speed
of launching this kind of boat, not having to blow it up, getting it in the
water, grabbing the oars and rowing an anchor out could be the difference
between losing your boat and not. The big issue with catching out is to do it
smoothly so you don't foul the line when you're hauling it out. The easiest way to
do this is go after pick up your anchor, untie it and secure it, and then put the
anchor in out of the way, forward part of the middle of the dinghy, flake the line
into the boat, the bottom of the boat like so. This way if you flake it in it
doesn't foul up. Don't coil it whatever you do because it'll be bound to loop
over itself. So when you reckon you've got enough out by your marks on the line,
you catch it out where you want it. With line it's quite easy, just runs out by
itself, it's easier than chain. You can catch out with chain, you do it the same
way and you just put your foot on the chain to stop it running out too fast, like
a break. But when you get near the end of the line, just ship your oar, drop your
anchor over. Lynn then puts it on the winch and she can tighten it up. Another
point to remember is it's very difficult to handle the line and an outboard at
the same time and not get the line in the propeller. Also if you're
dependent on the outboard to start to catch out an anchor, there's a good
possibility the motor won't start.
