The dinghy anchor is the most ignored bit of kit on most cruising boats, and the kedge is the one that has saved my season twice. The first time, the tender drifted off a beach in the Morbihan while we were buying bread, and only a snagged painter on a rock stopped it heading for open water. The second, our keel touched the mud on a falling tide in a Brittany river and a kedge laid out astern by dinghy was the only thing that pulled us off before we dried out for twelve hours. Both jobs needed a small anchor, the right line, and a tender to carry it. France, with its huge tides on the Atlantic side and its crowded summer anchorages, asks for this kit more than most cruising grounds.
This is a small, cheap kit. It is also the one that turns a developing problem into a non-event, and the savings on a single avoided grounding pay for it many times over.
Two jobs, one kit
A dinghy anchor and kedge kit does two distinct things, and it helps to keep them separate in your head.
The first job is anchoring the tender itself. You row or motor ashore, you want the dinghy to stay put off the beach rather than drift away or pound on rocks while you are gone. Small anchor, short scope, done.
The second job is kedging the mother ship: carrying an anchor away from the boat by dinghy and laying it out, so you can haul the boat off a grounding, hold her position in a tideway, or set a second anchor in a crowded bay. This is the job that earns the kit its place, and it needs a bit more line and a bit more thought.
The good news is one well-chosen anchor and warp can do both.
Sizing the anchor
For the dinghy itself, a 1.5kg folding grapnel is the standard choice and it is the right one. A grapnel with four flukes that fold into the shank stows in a small bag, takes up almost no space, and bites well into the rock, weed and shingle you find off French beaches. A typical folding grapnel measures around 305mm folded, which slips into a locker, and opens to roughly 275mm across the flukes. They cost very little, often well under 30 euros with a basic warp included.
For kedging the mother ship, weight is your friend, but you are limited by what a dinghy can carry and what one person can lift out over the transom. On a small cruising boat, a folding grapnel is a poor kedge in soft mud; better is a lightweight Fortress-style aluminium fluke anchor or a small Danforth, in the 2 to 4kg range, which gives real holding in the mud and sand of a French estuary while staying light enough to manhandle into a tender. Many cruisers carry their main spare anchor for this and use the dinghy grapnel only for the dinghy.
The warp: length is everything
A short warp is useless. The depth of water does not care how small your boat is, so you need real scope even on a tender. For the dinghy anchor, a practical setup is the 1.5kg grapnel, about 2 metres of 6mm chain to weight the pull horizontal, and a long length of 6mm braided line, ideally 10 metres or more so you can anchor in a few metres of water at a sensible scope. The classic ratio is at least 3:1 in calm conditions and more if it pipes up, so 10 metres of warp lets you sit safely in two or three metres of water.
For kedging, carry more. A kedge warp wants to reach well beyond the boat, so 30 to 50 metres of floating or braided line on a reel or in a flake-out bag is sensible. Floating line is worth the small premium for kedging because it stays clear of your own propeller, which matters enormously when you are motoring against a kedge to come off a grounding.
The chain leader does the real work in both cases. Even 2 metres of 6mm chain transforms a folding grapnel by keeping the pull along the seabed rather than lifting the flukes out.
Why the French tides make a kedge essential
This is where France justifies the kit. On the Atlantic coast the tidal range is enormous, and many Brittany and Channel harbours dry completely. If your boat takes the ground unexpectedly on a falling tide, a kedge laid out by dinghy into deeper water, set hard, and then hauled in as you motor astern, is the fastest way off before the water leaves you. Wait too long and you are committed to drying out, which on a fin-keeled boat means lying over and a long, uncomfortable wait.
The same kedge skill lets you hold position in a strong tidal stream while you sort a problem, or set a second anchor to limit your swing in a packed August anchorage. If a grounding does turn serious, our notes on a wider boat spares kit france and on what the boat documents france gendarmerie maritime inspectors expect are worth a read, because a controlled response is what keeps an awkward moment from becoming an incident report.
The tender also carries the kit ashore for the fun stuff. Anchoring the dinghy securely off a beach is what lets you wander inland or get the snorkelling kit france wet without one eye permanently on a drifting boat.
Laying a kedge from the dinghy, step by step
The skill is worth rehearsing in calm conditions before you need it in anger. Flake the warp into the dinghy so it runs out freely without snagging, never coiled in a way that knots under load. Lower the anchor over the dinghy's stern, not the bow, with a couple of metres of warp paid out, and motor or row away from the boat in the direction you want to pull, feeding the warp out as you go so it does not drag the anchor along the bottom. When you reach the spot, lower the anchor straight down rather than throwing it, take up the slack from the boat, and snub it on a cleat to let the flukes dig in.
Coming off a grounding then becomes a matter of taking the strain on the warp, by hand, by winch, or by motoring gently astern, while the rising tide does most of the work. The mistake people make is laying the kedge too short or too downwind, so it drags the moment they pull. Give it scope, set it in the direction of deeper water, and let it bite before you load it. Practise it once on a quiet afternoon and it stops being frightening.
The kit list
Keep it together, in one bag, ready to grab.
- A 1.5kg folding grapnel for the dinghy, with 2m of 6mm chain and 10 to 15m of 6mm braided warp.
- A 2 to 4kg aluminium fluke or Danforth-style kedge for the mother ship, or your main spare anchor.
- 30 to 50m of floating kedge warp in a flake-out bag, so it runs free without snagging.
- A couple of stainless shackles, moused with seizing wire so they cannot work loose, and a swivel.
- A sharp knife clipped into the bag, because the moment you most need to cut a fouled warp is the moment you cannot find a blade.
- A pair of gloves, because hauling a muddy kedge warp hand over hand without them is a quick way to a torn palm.
Why I never sail France without it
The whole kit costs perhaps 80 to 150 euros depending on the kedge, and it lives in a single bag in a cockpit locker. Against that, set the cost and embarrassment of drifting after your tender, or the day lost lying on the mud in a Brittany river because you had no quick way to haul off. A kedge is not glamorous gear and you may go a whole season without laying one. The summer you do need it, it is the difference between a story you tell with a laugh and one you would rather forget. Buy the grapnel and the warp first, add a proper kedge anchor when you can, and learn to lay one from the dinghy before you are doing it for real with the tide going out.
