Comment

Comment by Greg Hatten on January 29, 2009 at 7:15am

Good one!! The exact same thing happened to one of the guys in our group several years ago, and he has removed his anchor bracket ever since... happened to him in Coffee Pot, by the way.
I have a Bo's Anchor System and I left my anchor on the boat, but tied the rope off inside the boat so my foot couldn't accidently hit the foot release and drop the anchor in some of the wilder stuff. Next time, however, I'll remove the anchor altogether in all the class III's & IV's... too many bad things can happen - even if the rope is tied off..

Comment by Mike Dearing on January 29, 2009 at 7:07am

Wow I didn't even notice the anchor hanging! That is so friggen dangerous. IMO the most dangerous thing on a driftboat is the anchor.

Little story about my last trip down in my driftboat. We were drfiting some water below battle bar and had just worked our way through a whole flottilla of guidboats (most driftboat guide trips on the Rogue go in pretty big groups three to four boats, I'm assuming its to help each other down the ladder and if they get in trouble) and one of the old crusty guides made a smartass comment about how I must be a expert oarsman to leave the anchor bracket attached to my boat. I kinda laughed it off and thought, whatever....Well the next day we ran mule creek canyon and long story short after a few "exciting" moments right at the beginning on the narrows the stern of my boat got a little to close to left wall then sucked us into a keeper eddy that spun the boat around doing complete 360's.During one of those 360 the anchor bracket made contact with the wall hard shearing it right off my boat!

So needless to say, seems to old guide was actually trying to do me a favor by telling me to remove my anchor bracket. Talking to a few guides later on that day they told me that they usually don't even bother to put the anchor bracket on until they get below blossom. Now I know why....

Comment by Greg Hatten on January 29, 2009 at 5:30am

Yup... I'd say the guy in the front has probably just pee'd his pants...??

Comment by Jason Knight on January 29, 2009 at 5:06am

SO what you guys are saying is... Don't do that? Looks scary!

Comment by Greg Hatten on January 28, 2009 at 7:03pm

He's in a bad way... that's such a tough place to get "unstuck" from. Don't know what happened - but glad it wasn't me on the oars.

Comment by mitchell on January 28, 2009 at 6:57pm

U gotta wonder why the hell that anchor is still hanging out in that kind of water? From the looks of it he would not have needed it for some distance. Pull that sucker in. Easy to arm chair..sorry. I've never done any dumb dumbs.

Comment by Mike Dearing on January 28, 2009 at 6:48pm

Scary man, bad place to be. You hope he just washed off. But when the boat starts dipping water on the up river side its the beginning of the end.

Cool pic though greg.

Mike