Re: Mushroom Anchor And Mooring
I like the "Why not make your own idea". Not only may you save some money, but you have to get that thing out to the desired location and sink it. How you gonna do that?
Would think a little creativity and a few bags of Sacrete with an embedded rebar loop would do nicely for a fraction of the cost of what you are talking about. Rebar is high tensile steel and resists corrosion (other than surface skin-over) very well.
400# at 80# ea of Sacrete is 5ea $3 bags. You could build a square wooden box made out of any kind of wood (new, old, doesn't matter....will just be a form for your concrete till it sets up), $30 ought to cover that.
Get a 4' piece of 3/4" rebar, for $5 and bend in the shape of a horse shoe. Finally get a farm tractor inner tube (probably used and free as you are only going to use it for moving the anchor out to location) of sufficient size to support 400#.....a 16.9 or 18.4 x 38 is a good place to start. These tires are used on tractors in the 100 hp arena and you want a large diameter to assist in keeping the thing from tumping over on the way to the anchoring site. Any full service tire store close to agriculture will have them. Then you will need another piece of plywood to fit across the inner tube to support the anchor while building it up and floating it out to the desired location. Another few bucks.....geez we're at $50. Not bad.
Take the materials and the inner tube to the beach and make the anchor right there. Little or no wave action at the selected site would certainly help. Embed the rebar till only about a couple of inches of loop are on top of the crete. The ridges on the bar will keep it from pulling out when setup.
Maybe you could plan an overnight beach party and make this part of it; get the kids involved if you have some little "tykes". In the morning it would be ready to go.....especially if you get Sacrete with calcium in it to enhance curing in cooler weather.
I'd attach your anchor chain with a clevis of suitable size. You might take some monofilament fishing line (won't deterioriate) and secure the pin in the clevis so that there is no chance of coming unscrewed. Course when you tighten the screw, you put the clevis in tension which helps to keep the screw in place like a lock washer would do on a conventional bolt-nut fastner.
After carefully towing to the desired location, slowly let the air out of the tube and while holding onto the attached anchoring chain/line, obviously paying out chain as it goes down, guide it down to the bottom and let her sit. I'd do this carefully as the crete would still be a tad "green" and you don't want to disturb your rebar.
If you don't think 400# is enough, just add more Sacrete. Grin
Shouldn't take long for that to embed it's self in the bottom. Walla done deal.
My idea
Mark
because the fields have SO many boats