Not uncommon to walk the anchor back to the water if you are planning on dropping it rather than 'dropping from the pipe'.
Maybe , on their first outing, they were just being cautious.
A ship I was on for some years was built in Korea in 1999, she had a total blackout immeadiately after dropping the pilot after delivery. Anchors were both still in the pipe and couldn't be dropped as there was no hydraulic power to the cable compressors. That system was soon modified.

This anchor did look like it was left hanging like that by accident. There was no significant weather on that day, so I don't think that the vessel was in danger from a swinging anchor, but I still hope they remembered to hoist it up all the way eventually... :)

Cheers

Vlad

Has a suspended anchor ever holed a vessel anytime? Would an anchor be capable of holing a vessel?