Your anchor is stuck fast under a rock. You motor the boat until it sits directly over the anchor, take in the rode until it's vertical, and cleat it off tight. Why does this often free the anchor?

A vertical rode lets the boat's buoyancy and swell pull the anchor straight up, a direction its flukes can't resist

The shorter vertical rode increases scope, which loosens the anchor's grip on the seabed

⚓ Weighing & Freeing a Fouled Anchor

Weighing anchor is the act of hauling it back aboard — and the golden rule is to let the boat do the pulling, not the crew. Motor slowly forward while a crew member signals directions, taking in rode (the anchor line or chain) as you go. When the rode points straight down ("up and down"), the boat sits directly over the anchor. A gentle nudge forward then breaks it out of the seabed, and you lift it the last few metres by hand or windlass. Never try to drag a dug-in anchor up by brute strength from a stationary boat — you risk injury and a snapped back.

Sometimes the anchor won't budge: it's fouled, hooked under a rock, cable, or old mooring chain. The first trick uses geometry: motor slowly so the boat sits directly above the anchor and cleat off the rode short. The buoyancy of the boat — or a passing swell lifting the bow — applies a steady upward pull the anchor's flukes weren't designed to resist, often popping it free.

If that fails, motor in a wide circle to change the pull direction, or use a tripping line — a light line pre-attached to the anchor's crown (the bottom end) and buoyed at the surface. Pulling the crown drags the anchor out backwards, the opposite of how it set. Recall from earlier cards how scope and pull-angle make an anchor dig in; freeing it is simply reversing that logic — lift vertically or pull from the wrong end.