How to Remember a Good Anchorage for Next Time
You found the right one. Good holding, tucked in out of the swell, room to swing on the tide without drifting down onto your neighbor, and quiet all night. Six months later you plan the same trip and you cannot remember whether you dropped off the north point or the south, how much scope you had out, or which way to tuck when the wind clocked around. To remember a good anchorage, mark where you actually set the hook and save the holding, depth, wind protection, and swing room right there with it. Do that and the anchorage you liked becomes one you can choose again on purpose.
Most anchorage advice is about sizing up a spot cold. This guide covers the other half: keeping the one you already trust, so the next trip starts from a known good anchorage instead of a fresh guess and a slow creep in on the sounder.
Why a good anchorage is easy to lose
An anchorage hides the very things that made it good. From the cockpit at anchor, one stretch of shoreline looks like the next, and there is rarely a close-in mark to line up on the way there is over a reef or a ledge.
What made the spot work does not show on a chart either. Holding, the wind angle you had that day, how much room there was at the tide you were on — none of it is printed anywhere. It lived in your head, and heads fade. Come back a season later and "it was good in here" does not tell you where to drop.
Small errors cost you, too. Set the hook 50 yards off from last time and you can land on a patch of grass that will not bite, or a rock the sand was hiding.
To remember a good anchorage, mark where you set the hook
The spot worth saving is where the anchor bit the bottom. Where the boat floats now is a different place. Once you back down and settle, you have drifted well back on your scope, so the boat can sit a hundred feet downwind of the hook. Save that floating position and next time you will drop your anchor on top of where you used to lie, which is the wrong patch of water.
So capture it at the source. When the anchor is set, you have backed down, and it is holding, drop a pin at the bow, or note the helm position and add "anchor about 90 feet ahead." A phone fixes your position to within about 10 to 16 feet under open sky, close enough to put you back over the same bottom.
Do it right then, settled, before the anchor beer. A mark you reconstruct from memory on the drive home is a guess with coordinates on it.
Note holding, depth, wind protection, and swing room
The coordinates get you back over the bottom. These notes tell you whether to stay. Save them next to the pin while they are still in front of you:
- Holding. The bottom type and how well the anchor set. "Bit first try in soft mud, backed down to 2000 rpm, no drag" is worth more than a five-star rating from a stranger.
- Depth and the tide you read it at. Note the stage, because 18 feet at half tide on a 6-foot range means about 15 at low. Write it the way you took it: "18 ft, half tide, flooding."
- Scope. How much rode you had out for the depth and the wind. "90 ft of chain in 18 ft, sat quiet in 20 knots."
- Wind protection. Which directions you were tucked from and which way was open. "Solid from N through E, wide open to a SW blow" tells you at a glance whether tomorrow's forecast fits.
- Swing room. How much water was around you and what you would swing toward as the tide or wind turned — a shoal, a mooring field, the boat that anchored in behind you.
- Hazards. The rock off the point, the crab-pot field, the cable-area markers you want to stay clear of on the way in.
Six words of the right notes beat a whole paragraph of "nice spot."
Build a shortlist of anchorages that worked
Over a season a handful of these add up, and that short list is worth more than any cruising guide, because every spot on it is one you have personally trusted overnight.
Tag them so you can sort the list to the day you are having. Good in a north blow. Fine for a lunch stop, too rolly to sleep. Room for deep draft. Then when you plan a trip you are choosing among proven anchorages, and you have a ready fallback for the night your first pick is full or the wind comes from the wrong quarter.
Pull up the right one before you arrive
Read your own note before you commit to going in. Check the wind forecast against your protection line and pick the anchorage that faces the right way for the night rather than the one that happens to be closest.
Then let it point you in. A live bearing and distance to the saved drop point walks you back to the exact patch of bottom you set on last time. It points; you drive — you still come in on the chart and the depth sounder, slow, watching the numbers, because sand shifts and other boats will already be swinging on their own hooks.
One more thing. Good anchorages are often where the signal dies. Whatever you use has to work offline, or it is useless in the one cove you most wanted it in.
Keeping your anchorages yours, offline
A paper log in the chart table is completely private, with two catches: lose the book and the spots are gone, and it will not help you find the drop in the dark.
An app fixes both, as long as it keeps the data on the device instead of a server. Keep your marks on the phone, and export your own copy to a file for backup, so a lost phone does not cost you the season's list. A quiet anchorage stops being quiet once the numbers get around, so the good ones are best kept to yourself.
Common questions
What should I write down about an anchorage?
Where you set the hook, the bottom and how well it held, the depth and the tide you read it at, how much scope you had out, which wind directions you were protected from, and how much room you had to swing. That handful of notes turns a dot on a map into a spot you can choose on purpose.
How accurate is a phone GPS for marking an anchorage?
Under open sky a phone fixes your position to about 10 to 16 feet, close enough to put you back over the same patch of bottom. Drop the pin once the anchor is down and holding, from as near the bow as you can.
Do I mark the boat or the anchor?
Mark where the anchor set. The boat floats well back from there once you settle on your scope, sometimes a hundred feet downwind, so the boat's position sends you to the wrong place. Drop the pin at the bow, or note the anchor relative to the helm.
Can I save anchorages without cell service?
Yes, with an app that stores everything on the phone and lets you download the map area ahead of time. Save the area once and the map, your saved marks, and dropping new pins all work with zero bars, which matters because the best anchorages are often out of signal.
One tool that does this
Wakelog is a private logbook built for exactly this. You drop a pin in two taps and tag it (Anchor, Sandbar, Snorkel, Fish, Dive), then save your holding, depth, and wind notes right on the spot. When you head back, its Take me back feature points a live bearing and distance to the saved drop. It points; you drive. It works offline with zero bars, everything stays on your phone with no account and no feed, and you can export your spots to a JSON or GPX file, so nothing is ever locked in.
It's on the App Store for iPhone now (14 days free, then $12.99 a year or $49.99 once for life). If you want your proven anchorages one tap away next season, download it at getwakelog.com.