PART I: ANCHORING
I single-hand a lot and I fish off-shore and sometimes it can be worth your life to have to go up to the bow when the bow is jumping up and down in four-foot (or more 
) sweeps. Therefore, I prefer deploying and retrieving my anchor from the cockpit. To that end, I have a 25-foot length of ½-inch line left permanently on the bow cleat, run through a chock, then aft along the outside of my boat's molded-in toe-rail to a jam cleat alongside the cockpit coaming. This way, I don't have to go forward to attach the end of the anchor rode.
I keep the anchor(s) in a cockpit locker. You'd think with as many as four anchors in a tiny locker that it would be one long spaghetti snarl and a first glance might bear that out; but I have one refinement. Even when I drag an anchor and rode into the cockpit and it looks like this: 
It ends up being more organized than it looks, thanks to VELCRO!! 
The Velcro strap keeps the loops of rode from tangling into a Gordian Knot. 
Each rode has its own velcro strap. I get those 18-inch straps that are 6 for 5 bucks from the Poli-Glow booth at the Boat Shows. To keep from losing the strap, it is worked into the yarns on the tri-laid line. Don’t simply un-twist the yarns and run the strap through; it will eventually work its way out. Un-twist the yarns and run it over one yarn and under another yarn, as though you were doing an eye-splice. Two yarns (out of three) lock it in quite nicely.
Next, I tie a bow-line from the line lead aft (I prefer to think of it as an "anchor painter") to the eye on the anchor rode. I snatch on a line to the anchor painter (pics showing that will be later on) and then heave the anchor over the side. 
Brennan's Rule Of Correct Anchor Size:
10 pounds less than the maximum weight, you can heave over the side! 
There she goes! 
This is the block I typically snatch on to the anchor painter, just before I toss the anchor overboard.
OOPS!! 
Just checked my Chapman’s!
This is the block I typically snatch on to the anchor painter, just before I CAREFULLY LOWER the anchor over the side! 
Another neat thing you can do with this arrangement is to bring the block aft to form varying angles, as a sort of anchor bridle. A little angle can help keep the bow to the wind, to keep the hull from "sailing up the rode" and a lot of angle can make for a "Y" shaped bridle to present the hull at right angles to the wind/current for fishing. If you have several fishermen (DOHHH!!! ANGLERS!! [Wife critiquing my sexist vocabulary, over my shoulder!] ) ANGLERS aboard, then they can be deployed along the length of the boat and avoid entangling their lines.
People ask me if it’s not a Real Chore to pull that painter back to the cockpit.
NOPE! 
Next: Deploying the Anchor Ball and retrieving the anchor.
Charles Brennan
An Overdue Promise: Anchoring with an Anchor Ball (Warning: Lotsa Pics) . . . 
-- Charles Brennan, Windrose 18, So. Florida -- 1/1/07 7:03p.m.
-- Jeff G. US 21 Bourbonator, Indiana -- 1/2/07 5:25a.m.
-- Doug, P-18.2 Lk Norman, NC -- 1/3/07 10:47a.m.