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Holding Your Course in Place

     With a portable slalom course (and also with permanent courses that employ a mainline into their design) the course must be anchored at each end with an anchor of sufficient weight and design so that once the anchors "lock in" on the bottom of your site the anchors and the courses structure will remain in place without moving. This is a very important and a very critical point. All portable slalom courses and many permanently installed courses use only two anchors, one at each end of the mainline. If your anchors won't hold into the bottom you cannot get tension on the courses mainline sufficient to hold the course straight, regardless of the brand of course you're installing. The two factors most important to anchors used with a slalom course are 1) the holding power of the anchor's design, and 2) the weight of the anchor. Without enough weight an anchor can be too easily dragged around by the external factors brought to bear on the courses structure (i.e. the effects of a boat passing repeatedly over the submerged structure of the course). Inability of the anchor to lock into the bottom of your site (due to its shape or design) will have the same negative result.

     Many permanently installed courses use anchors weighing several hundred pounds that are often made of concrete, old cast iron, even old engine blocks and so on. The massive weight of these anchors is usually enough to offset any external factors that might pull the anchor loose or otherwise cause slack in the mainline, which in turn will cause the course to not retain its alignment. Obviously with a portable course the use of such massive, heavy anchors is just not practical. You need anchors that will hold well and weigh enough to stay put, yet they need to remain "portable".

     That brings us to our second point, the design (shape) of the anchor. How an anchor is shaped has a direct effect on its holding power. It also affects how easily that anchor can be transported (the "portability" factor) and how much potential it has to tear up your boat or transport vehicle, all of which are important considerations for a truly portable course system.

A Brief Anchor Tutorial

     As stated above the design of an anchor directly affects its holding power. Let's briefly cover the design of some of the anchors commonly used with a portable slalom course. 



     One design commonly used with a portable slalom course is the navy anchor. This type of anchor belongs to a group of anchors more commonly known as fluke anchors. Fluke anchors are loosely defined here as any anchor that has one or more points or flukes extending forward from the main body of the anchor. This type of anchor by the nature of its design requires that it be dragged along the bottom for some distance allowing the points or flukes the opportunity to dig into the bottom or find something to catch under, as opposed to using massive weight to hold itself in place. To work effectively this type of anchor should have several feet of heavy chain attached to the anchors eye, allowing the flukes to remain pointed down as the anchor is dragged along the bottom. By its nature then this anchor type is difficult to use effectively with a portable course. Here's why.

     Once you've installed your course into the water you'll need to stretch and tension the mainline to get your course to align (discussed in detail later in this article). When you pull tension you'll especially want your second anchor to lock-in quickly to hold the tension you've just pulled on the mainline. If the second or end anchor doesn't grab hold quickly you won't be able to achieve sufficient mainline tension, which directly affects the straightness of your course. Fluke anchors by their design need to be dragged along in order to dig in and hold, a luxury you don't have when tensioning a portable course. If after pulling tension on the mainline the second (end) anchor doesn't grab quickly, you'll lose much of that tension and your course likely won't go straight or remain straight.

     Another common type of anchor used with a portable course is the good old homemade bucket-of-concrete anchor. These are generally made by pouring cement into a plastic bucket (five gallon paint buckets work well for this) and leaving an eyebolt or some other type of hardware to which a rope can be attached sticking out of the top. The advantage to this type of anchor is that they can be made very inexpensively. The disadvantages are that 1) they're generally quite heavy; 2) they're awkwardly shaped and sized making them difficult to haul around; and 3) their shape often won't hold well in many bottom conditions, even if they're considerably heavier in weight. Surprisingly even concrete anchors weighing 60 pounds or more can slip pretty easily causing the mainline to lose tension and the course to not hold its alignment. This is due to the fact that their design is not created to bite into the bottom effectively.

     Anchors fashioned from steel car wheels or even old engine blocks (it happens) suffer some of the same problems. They may not hold into the bottom too well due to their shape, they are awkward to haul around, they're not very compact, and it can be challenging to keep them from tearing up your boat's or tow vehicle's interior.



     Tri-fluted river anchors (pictured above) have the right combination of quick-grabbing design and solid holding power. The design of this anchor allows it to bite into the bottom of your site quickly without requiring that it be dragged along the bottom too far to get it to lock-in, which as explained above is a major consideration. The 30-pound versions of these anchors seem to work the best. Their combination of holding power, sufficient weight, and compact size make them the best anchors available (at least in this writers opinion) for use with a portable course.

     The point being made here is this: the whole idea behind a portable slalom course is that all of its components should be truly "portable". Large, heavy, awkward anchors just do not make good passengers in your tow vehicle or especially in your boat. Again, if your anchors won't bite in and hold well you won't get sufficient tension on your mainline. Without enough mainline tension your course won't go straight and remain straight. If it won't remain straight you're not going to have a positive experience with your portable slalom course. So as you can see from this, the anchors you use with your portable slalom course are a very critical component of it!

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