Tower Quest is a planning tool π οΈ for the one job on a small boat that almost everyone still does by folklore: anchoring. It answers the two questions that actually matter before you turn in β how much rode to pay out here, and whether you will still be clear of the shoal, the quay and the boat next to you at three in the morning, when the tide has come up and the wind has backed.
The heart of it is a berth plan πΊοΈ seen from above. Drag β your anchor onto the water, pay out rode on a rail, and the swing circle draws itself around you from the rode you have out plus the length of your boat. Drop in what is genuinely around you β a drying bank, a stone jetty, a mooring buoy, a neighbour carrying a swing circle of their own β and every overlap flares red and tells you the exact number π’ of metres by which you are short. Then run the night: the tide rises and falls across your layout while the water under your keel and the radius of your swing are drawn as two clean π§Ό curves, with the worst moments named on the clock rather than left for you to find at 03:00.
Scope is worked out properly rather than by the old rule of four times the depth. Tower Quest takes the charted depth, the height of high water, the height of your bow roller, the wind you expect and whether you are on chain, rope or a mix π₯£ of both β and tells you what to pay out, with the reasoning written out beside every number π’. Tower Quest also carries a holding check β
that puts your own anchor, its weight and the seabed against the real wind load on your own boat, a night checklist that computes the alarm radius to key into a plotter, ten hand-written situations to work through, and an illustrated guide to the eight anchor types and what each is genuinely good and bad at.
Everything is worked out on the device π± from numbers π’ you enter yourself. There is no account, no GPS tracking and no tide service to subscribe to β and no anchor alarm, because this app is about getting the anchorage right before you need one.
Plan πΊοΈ an anchorage properly: scope, holding and swing, not folklore.