Hi Jez
I sail at Chichester mainly and anchor off East Head for lunch more than anything else. I use a 2.5kg Danforth with 2 metres of chain with our Wayfarer. If I was going to sleep in the boat I then take a secondary anchor of a different type. My point is you don’t want a big anchor and chain and massive warp if all you are doing is lunch stops. But you do want one big enough for the sailing you do. (I took my info from Margaret Dye’s Dinghy Cruising book.)
From experience 😳 beware of anchoring when the tide is ebbing hard at springs off East Head, drop the sails and keep the motor running until you are sure the anchor has dug in, there’s not much space when things go wrong….
PS That incident was nothing to with appropriate anchor and so on, it was to do with poor deployment and plain ignorance of good practice, not appreciating the strength of the current, not allowing ourselves enough space down stream and putting out enough warp in the first place to start with. It wasn’t in a Wayfarer though. Hope you don’t mind me sharing that one but what looked like a perfect anchorage turned into a nightmare for a while.
cheers
Dave