Using an Anchor Buddy to Dock

[Bruce]

Last week while changing the bunk boards on my trailer I borrowed a neighbors small dock. The dock was not large enough to tie up alongside. So I used my Anchor Buddy. I placed my boat away from the dock and set an anchor off the bow with the anchor buddy attached. Then I backed up to the dock and attached a 15' dock line from the dock to one of the rear cleats. After I exited the boat the anchor buddy retracted and pulled the boat away from the dock. I had placed the boat down wave from the main channel so the force of the waves would be against the 15' dock line. I left her parked there for around 8 hours then returned with the family to go out on the lake that evening. When we returned my 7 year old daughter walked over to the dock line and pulled her back to the dock. Once we were all on board I untied the dock line then pulled the anchor in. This worked very well so I wanted to share.

 

[waterboy]

very cool, I have to get one of those things. Just haven't thought about while at the store yet.

 

[itsdgm]

They are pretty nice. We've never used ours while tied to the dock. But we use it all the time while being anchored in a cove. Makes it nice to pull the boat to shore while re boarding.

 

[jdonalds]

Cool. Thanks for posting.

 

[Kelso]

I've yet to get our boat lift at our lake house serviced or even determined if the cable capacity is enough for our boat (used to just have a small boat on it), so I moor out just as you've described, except I leave the large box anchor in the water the duration of our stay and have the end of the anchor buddy and safety rope attached to a bouy to make retrieval easy upon returning to dock. Works awesome. I set the rope line to go taught about 1 foot from the dock ladder, just in case the anchor buddy fails.

 

[HawkTX]

I have one of those, but have never used it. I may try it out this summer.