Marin raises an excellent point about whether it would be simpler and easier to use a trip line secured to the crown of an anchor rather than a stout snubber to bully the anchor out of the mud, as I was writing about. I HAVE used a trip/buoy line (mine is 1/2 inch twisted nylon) when anchoring in water deeper than I could easily free dive as in a river or near a wreck where hooking the anchor is more likely, but you do end up making a trade-off decision about the size of the line you are willing to deal with versus depth of water versus likelihood of getting it in your own props and rudders or entwined in your rode. Also, shortening up a longish piece of, say 1/2-inch, line without cutting it to match the depth of water over the anchor is another issue requiring some imagination. If left too long it is likely to get hung on props/rudders as the boat swings and tides reverse. I could see imaginative use of wire ties securing longish bights of the retrieving line to itself - they would easily break free once some strain was placed on the retrieving line from the windlass. In a windy or high-current anchorage it will likely be necessary to maneuver the boat "upstream" of the anchor's set direction to allow a useful pull on the retrieving line to get a hung anchor free; so now you must consider buoying off the rode (NOT something I will ever do with my all-chain rode - thus, I use nylon rode in these situations) to keep it clear of the screw(s). In our current storm anchorage, I have found that even marker buoys with very light line tend to be a real nuisance. Lots of boats in close proximity with numerous anchor rodes criss-crossed all over the place cries out for simplicity. This last time, after Hurricane Dennis, two of my anchors were in waist-deep water where I physically dug them out and placed them in the dinghy for return to the mother ship a couple hundred feet away in the deeper channel, and the other two were in water not much deeper than my 4.5 foot draft where I could have dived to disentangle them from obstructions. As regards my earlier experience in 1995 (Hurricane Opal) with a recalcitrant fisherman anchor, the 1/2-inch nylon trip line I might have used would probably have broken. BTW, I single-handed retrieving these four Hurricane Dennis anchors plus two lines ashore with 20 feet of chain around trees; so complexity was avoided at each turn. During Hurricane Opal, I set out six anchors in a circle in about 6-10 feet of water - all secured at the bow, each with a marker buoy with very light line. Each of the first five anchors was set with the boat (sorry, Phil, no room for error allowing them to set themselves), and their buoyed fiber rodes were tossed over the side. The all-chain anchor was the last one set. When the boat was at rest at the end of its all-chain rode, I was within boathook range of the other five rode bitter-end buoys. The retrieval option we see used on many local boats in the deeper Gulf, where a lot of anchoring is done on flat sandy bottom near wrecks and other debris sunk to attach fish, is the large red buoy with large stainless ring attached (a WM item). The skipper encircles his fiber rode with the ring and tosses the buoy over the side before running the boat in a circle around his anchor. The buoy/ring is submerged and supposedly dragged to the anchor shank where it floats the anchor off the bottom. Whether it would work if the anchor was actually hung on the wreck is problematic, but it surely does make pulling the anchor to the vessel easier from a bottom 60 or more feet deep. So use buoy/retrieving lines with care. I have made just about all the mistakes one can with them and tend to avoid them if possible. Rich Gano CALYPSO (GB 42-295) Southport, FL