Many of us sailors have an auxiliary fortress anchor either as a lunch hook or stern anchor and it’s handy to mount that on the stern someplace. There are commercially available fortress anchor mounts for this purpose. They cost $50 and up. However if you also add mud palms to the anchor to make it more effective in soft bottoms you will find that that interferes with most mounts. You can add an extra piece to some for the palm to nestle into. However Jon chose to build his own. In this article I’ll describe the mount Jon made. You would need to adapt it to your own boat and the materials you have available, but perhaps one example will get you thinking.
Mud Palms
What are Mud Palms? From the Jamestown Distributors website here is a cogent description:
The Mud Palms are a set of plates that bolt onto the crown of the anchor. The Mud Palms create a “lift” to the crown of the anchor, causing the flukes to point more directly to the seabed. They are [now] included in the box with every Fortress and Guardian anchor. The Mud Palms are designed to help the anchor set faster in any type of sea bottom.
Although they state the mud palms are included with each purchase, ours were not and we have seen very few of these on anchors in use. This may be a recent change.
Fluke Protector or “Anchor Bra”
The other thing you’ll notice in these pictures is an anchor bra mounted on the flukes. This protects boats and people from being impaled by the anchor while it is mounted. It is removed before deploying the anchor.
The Anchor Mount
The anchor mount is bolted to the toe rail and fastened with ubolts to the stainless rail part of our lifelines. The starboard / HDPE plastic body could also be made of plywood, but with starboard you don’t need to epoxy the surface for UV and water protection. Jon was able to get large amounts of this material for free when they refurbished our marina (the starboard is used around the pilings and in the corners of the finger piers).
We hope this gives you some ideas for building your own. Happy Hooking!
