Anchor For Swim Raft
 

We recently lost our anchor that we attach to our swim raft. Any suggestions of what to use? Someone suggested cement blocks

Blocks
 

Yes VERY BIG cement blocks. Not sure how much wave and water action you get but bigger is always better:laugh:

Plastic barrel
 

I bought 2 recycle plastic drums, sawed them in half with a sawzall and poured some Sakrete redi-mix in them. You can buy a large eyebolt to put into the wet concrete. Its been there for years and looks great upon inspection!

Now THAT'S the best solution !


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Bigger is always better... and from a size perspective it really depends on the wave action in the raft is to be situated...

In a fairly busy part of the lake, my neighbor just chain several cinder block together.... and made sure he had an ample amount of chain up to the raft... it has been fine for several years now....

If I recall I believe he used like 12 or so blocks... which at say 25 lbs a piece would be 300 lbs....

We would take a 5 gallon home depot bucket. Fill it with cement. Then put in it a big eye hook with a long shaft that had thick screw threads on it. let it dry and you have something that you can move into place with a secure way to attach chain and rope.

Fay's Boat Yard in Gilford has nice quality concrete blocks designed to be used for anchoring a mooring. Weighing about 250-lbs, and costing about $40; and including a pvc tube within the concrete block designed for threading through an anchor line....and it all seems to work great....plus if you boat over to Fay's, they will delicately load it onto your boat........ crash.....boom.....ho-ho-ho......hey you nit-wit.....you scratched my concrete block!

Another variation on make-your own: I placed an old car tire on a piece of plywood, filled it with ready-mix concrete, and set into that a galvanized eye bolt with oversized washer fixed in place with a pair of nuts so as to place the washer well down into the concrete. After a few days of curing, it was easy to roll the concrete-filled tire the rest of the way to the shore and up a 2x8 onto the surface of the raft. The raft was used to float the mooring out to the proper depth, where it was rolled over the side (with chain on it, of course.

After a period of use, we decided it was out too far. I hung a chain winch under the raft, connected the cable down a ways on the chain, and used the raft to raise the mooring up enough off the bottom to float it inward to its present location, where it hasn't budged since.

Green's Basis is quiet water. It shouldn't take much to anchor a float securely there. If you make one the way I did, perhaps just an old trailer tire would be adequate.

To approximate the amount of concrete mix you'll need, measure the inside diameter of the tire and the height of the concrete fill. Get volume as
V=3.14*(D^2)/4
and (assuming you measured in inches) divide by 1728 to get cubic feet. The rubber tire will take up some space, so the volume calcuated will be a bit oversized. An 80-lb bag of dry ready-mix concrete will give you just over 1/2 cuft of poured concrete, per this Quickrete website calculator:
http://www.quikrete.com/calculator/main.asp\

The l density of concrete varies, but you can use anything from 130-145 lb/cuft and you'll be close enough for this project.

Anchor Blocks
 

Try Dave Farley at Diversified Marine, in the old Bea Mae's property across from Sawyer's in Gilford (intersection of Rote 11 and 11B). I know he has and makes mooring blocks from concrete whenever there is excess of a job. His cell is (603) 630-2259.

your location is on the corner which will get more wind so the more weight the better

Go to Center Harbor Dock...they have a number of pre made anchors. And they are close to you. Ask for Don..... or email them and he will send you back the price. You can get the email address and form right on their website. Simple......