if an anchor is heavy enough to hold a ship in place, how does the ship not sink when hauling it?
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It’s not about the weight per se; the anchor does need to be heavy but it’s not purely its inertia that’s holding it in place. Rather, it creates friction through contact with the ocean floor.
There’s a concept called static friction; you know how, if you’re pushing a heavy box or something else, you need to push really hard to get it moving, but once it’s in motion keeping it moving is a lot easier? It’s the same idea. Once the anchor’s on the ground, the ship can’t pull it along without producing enough force to overcome the static friction it’s generating with the ocean floor. It doesn’t need to weigh as much as the rest of the ship, it just needs to weigh enough that the forces generated by the ship drifting around can’t overcome its static friction.
Or, to put it another way: if the ship itself was in contact with the ground, it would also be unable to move because of friction, even though the ship has no problem floating.
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