Favorite Anchorage

What makes a favorite anchorage?

• Does it need to be exotic?
• Does it need to be distant?
• Does it need to have breathtaking scenery?

No. Although some of these could certainly turn an ordinary anchorage into a spectacular one, these are not required conditions.

I submit that your favorite anchorage is the one you visit perhaps most weekends all summer long. It is as comfortable as an old shoe. You know it well enough to pick your way into it in the dark or in thick fog. You have a favorite place to drop the hook, and are unsettled if someone has had the effrontery to take your spot, forcing you to fall back to one of your alternates.

It is probably a short journey from your home moorage, but perhaps it is long enough to let you feel that you have traveled to get there.

You know every inch of the shoreline, and you comment when someone repaints their house, or has a home improvement project going.

Whatever its shortcomings (and there may be many), you overlook them, because it is... home. You know you are home when the anchor hooks and you kill the engine. It is a palpable feeling.

And you sleep more soundly there than you do in your home slip.

Favorite Anchorage