So, yesterday had a really nice sail in Tomales Bay, my usual spot. Winds were light to start, and picked up nicely in the afternoon. All the sailing exercises I picked up at the Small Craft Academy I wanted to do I got done. Series of gybes, MOB drills, sailing backwards, standing up while sailing, sailing with my legs, all good stuff. Now came the anchoring. Perfect conditions. Wind a bit off the shore, shallow enough. So, I got out my Danforth and my new rectangular container complete with 80 feet of flaked rode in a figure 8. So far so good. I couldn't figure out if I dropped from the cockpit whether I should keep the line inside our outside the shrouds and pulpit. I elected inside, which was a mistake. In any event, dropped fine, backed the boat up with wind, set the anchor, and all was well. I walked forward and cleated off on the bow cleat. Had a nice lunch. Now for the fun part. Time to haul anchor. So, I raised the main to cock into the wind, walked forward and grabbed the rode, and pulled hand over hand forward. I easily raised the anchor, along with 20 pounds of reeds. So, I shook those off. In the meantime, the boat was sailing down wind happily without me steering. Now, I managed to wrap tons of rode around various things as I tried to deal with the line. I really looked like Inspector Clousseau by the end of it. Line everywhere. Amazing how much entropy there is on a boat. At least is wasn't 200 feet of it. At this point I shook my fists skyward, grabbed the tiller, and heaved to. Now I was stopped. I was able to extricate all of the line and flake it back into the container without hanging myself accidentally from the boom, stowed it all, and sailed off. Geez. I'm glad nobody was filming. Next time I will run the stuff all outside the shrouds and pulpit, leave the sails down, and try again. I've got a ways to go on that one. Daniel