Bosun's Bag

PRACTICAL TIPS FOR THE TRADITIONAL BOATER

- Tom Cunliffe

THE HONEST FISHERMAN

The honest fisherman. No such thing? You might have a point, except that we are not talking about the chap quietly attending to his pots or the midnight trawler skipper protected by the Colregs and his green over white who alters course across our bows. The sort of fisherman that should be of interest to all classic boaters isn’t out there terrorising the pelagic population, it’s the anchor that bears his name.

A hundred years ago, Fisherman anchors were standard issue on yachts and small commercial craft. Today, their reputation has been besmirched and they are often missing altogether from lists of desirable ground tackle in yachting text books, which is a pity. The first reason for this disappearance is the understandable though erroneous conclusion that, compared with modern patent anchors, the fisherman can be awkward to handle and tricky to stow. The second is that the Fisherman doesn’t actually work.

If you want a self-stowing anchor that you never have to touch, and operate a boat capable of such an arrangement, the first of these objections may hold a pint or two of water. The second reservation is pure balderdash, always discounting the Christmas-cracker anchors sold as the Fisherman in certain chandlers. For flukes, these wretched creations have nothing more than the palms banged out flat from the bent bar of the crown. If you are lucky this will have a bit of a point on it. You are unlikely to find an example weighing more than a bumper bag of Big-D peanuts, while the holding power compares unfavourably with a bent pin in a bucket of fine dry sand. No wonder the Fisherman has ended up with a bad name.