Sail Magazine anchor test results are in...

[Maine Sail]

The strength issue cracks me up. I had my Manson get caught in some granite tailings this summer off the Muscle Ridge at High and Dix Islands. It was really stuck but I kept at it for a half hour using the motor to no avail. We spun around it, pushed over it, spun 180 used full throttle etc. etc. I was stuck! I put on my mask and fins and went for a swim as I followed the anchor line down I could feel the big square granite blocks that perhaps had been a pier at one time during the heyday of quarrying. I was on my way back up to get my wrench to loosen the shackle when I decided to wait out the tide. It was coming in so I snubbed the chain and secured it to the bow cleat and waited. About 45 minutes later the anchor alarm went off and we were free.

I was totally expecting my Manson to be destroyed with the amount of force I had used but it came up with only a few gouges in the galvanizing! I'm not saying it's as tough as my forged CQR but the CQR is stronger than it needs to be. I can't recall any test that showed the CQR to hold more than 5000 lbs. ever yet the recent Sail tests showed numerous anchors that are welded holding 5000 lbs. and none of them broke..

I would much rather own a welded steel anchor than a "Cast" not "Forged" Bruce knock off. Cast anchors scare the heck out of me and I can only recall a one or perhaps two stories of Bruce knock off breaking..

[John Vigor]

Some questions from your experience:

1. Did any/many of the test results you saw include Rocna/Manson anchors? That designs is often referred to as a "new generation" anchor, so I wonder if there have been many evaluations that have included it.

2. Do many anchors break? In my limited experience, the only failure I've seen has been a bent shank, which happened when the wind shifted but the anchor didn't (thin plate steel shank).

No Todd, none of the tests I saw in my time included the Rocna/Manson "new generation" anchors.

Not many anchors will break when subjected to a straight-line pull. But a lot of anchors suffer damage of other kinds. I've seen several Danforths with flukes so badly twisted that they couldn't possibly set again. The high-tensile model Danforth probably came about as a result of that susceptibility.

If you ever anchor in rock, you'll find it comparatively easy to bend an anchor shank if the fluke becomes jammed in a crevice. There's a lot of leverage in action when you heave up against it.

I realize that it sounds dreadfully old-fashioned to question the need for new designs of anchors, even if they show no outstanding benefits over the established makes that have demonstrated their dependability over many decades. But the principles of anchoring haven't changed in centuries. The sea and the wind haven't changed, either.

The principles are quite simple. First, your anchor must penetrate the bottom. Weight helps here, the more the better. Second, it must present sufficient surface area, at the most proficient angle, to withstand the pull of your vessel in a strong wind. Third, it must be able to handle pulls from differing directions. In this connection, the rode must be able to brush over the anchor without getting caught on a protruding crown or stock.

There are four types of old-fashioned anchors that have withstood the test of time: The Fisherman, such as the Luke or the Herreshoff; the Danforth; the CQR; and the Bruce. There may certainly be other anchors that hold as well in certain circumstances, and there are certainly skippers who take more care about anchoring than others, who could make any type of anchor work satisfactorily.

But if you're new to the game, or uncertain, why stray from the proven four types? For most of us who do coastal cruising, the CQR and the Bruce make a great combination of bower and kedge. If you can carry more, a Danforth is good for sand and hard mud (as long as the wind direction doesn't reverse), and a big fisherman does well in rock.

Most of these are fairly expensive; some are hard to handle and stow, and heavy to raise; but those are the penalties that go with having anchors that work well when they're under water and you're supposed to be asleep. As with everything to do with boats. it's a trade-off. You have to earn your sleep--and your safety.

John V.

[ray b]

we allways use twin anchors set 180 apart

that gets you out of wind/tide shift worries

and gives a back up to the powerboat prop cut danger
a local fear far more often seen then draging with a proper rig

I donot care what anchor one is not enuff

[Steve Alarcon]

I'm surprised that there has been no mention of using a kellet. We have one from a company in Australia and it works wonderfully. I'm pretty strict about sufficient scope (nothing less than 6:1), and always set the anchor and then further set it with the engine at about 1200 RPM for several minutes. But I still put down the kellet if the wind is above 10 knots. Even in areas known for poor holding, it makes that CQR just dig, dig, dig. I would expect it would work equally well for other anchor designs.

[Neil Gordon]

we allways use twin anchors set 180 apart

Local custom and crowds mean a lot on this one. Boats need to swing the same of someone gets in trouble.

[Russell]

The bruce is extreamly popular, but consistantly test after test it tends to be a low performer. Yet I meet cruisers everyday who swear by them, never dragged, always sets, etc... These are full time cruisers who anchor constantly and in every kind of bottom imaginable. Personally I take this as the tests are faulty. Every test anyone has come up with is still extreamly limited and hardly replacates real world conditions. I think it would be impossible to come up with a good anchor test that could possibly come close to giving us a true representation of "what anchor is best".

That said, some of the new generation designs really interest me. My primary anchors are a bruce and a CQR. The CQR has been primary and on several occations I have had trouble setting it (hard marl and weeds mostly). Though once set it ussually performs very well, with wind shifts and heavy winds, I wont claim its been perfect though. My main interest in the new gen anchors, specificly the rocna or its copy the manson supreme, is with my intended med cruising, where much of the bottom is weedy, the design of these anchors really makes sense in how they could penetrate better then traditional anchors. This is not based on any real world knowledge really, just on ideas. For real world knowledge though, the CQR is horrible in grass, as are most anchors, and in the med, where grass is common, a very popular anchor is the buegal, which the rocna and manson supreme evolved from. Its sharp tip and edge seems to do a better job cutting through the weeds and into the real bottom. The hinge on the CQR, which in most bottoms is an advantage, seems to be detremental in weeds (this is from my own observations sitting in a dink watching one try to set).

There is always room for improvement, and I hope people keep trying to improve anchors. The tried and true bruce and CQRs are great anchors, but I really look forward to trying out one of the new gen anchors (once I am somewhere that shipping the anchor to me wont cost more then the anchor itsself).

[rtbates]

As with any and all anchors, what you anchor upon is of utmost importance. When I have doubts about what's below and I don't want to get wet, I send down my newest toy. http://www.cabelas.com/cabelas/en/templ ... id=0029142

Images are outstanding. I'm just waiting for a big fish to eat the camera!!

happy anchoring

[MBolton]

I wonder if anyone has any experience with this anchor?

http://www.xyzanchor.com/default.htm

I learned of it from an ad in the months Small Craft Advisor. As a coastal Georgia sailor with tides up to 9' I could feel safer with an anchor that does not need to reset with an 180 degree current shift. The ad claims that it can hold with as little as a 2:1 scope (although I can't imagine actually working with that little). I do like to use a lot of chain. I used to anchor my Coronado 27' with 100' of chain and 100' of nylon. That was my insurance policy when hurricane Hugo came thru in 1999.

This anchor looks a little large for my Typhoon.

All comments welcome.

J. Mark Bolton
Cape Dory Typhoon
Ossabaw Sound, Georgia

[MBolton]

Here is one more anchor test link that everyone might enjoy reading,


http://www.creativemarine.com/newprodct ... r_test.htm

[Steve Laume]

I have always maintained that statistics can be made to prove anything you want them to. Anchor tests do not seem to be too far from that. There is a reason you get three strikes in baseball. I like the idea of real world experience. If you are going to keep score of who drags with what then you better gather all of the other information too. Scope, setting anchor, size for the boat, chain facts and a host of other factors. I have a 35LB CQR with 30' of 3/8" chain and then nylon rode. This is heavier than it needs to be but I sleep well much of the time. I was hoping the preceding test would have been more uniform. More tests per anchor comes to mind. What effect does sailing back and forth along with bobbing up and down have on these anchors. This stuff is very hard to factor into a drag test. I would like to have an anchor that sets and holds better in very soft mud. That is the bottom type that makes me nervous with the CQR, Steve.

[Maine Sail]

The Sail Magazine article had more than one test per anchor. They tested all the anchors at three different locations with multiple sets, pulls and scopes and they then reported exactly what the results were. The XYZ by the way was a poor performer in this test!

People on other forums have made ridiculous claims that Sail gave preference and may have "fixed" the results to satisfy advertisers. Using this logic Sail magazine really cut off their supply of ad money this month. It seems two of the anchors that got beat up the worst were the LEWMAR Claw and the West Marine Performance 20. Lewmar is one of Sails larger advertisers! In this months issue they have one full pager and one quarter page ad. West Marine's VP of product development Chuck Hawley was actually involved in the testing and WM also spends ad money with Sail. Three of the best performers Manson, Hydrobubble & Rocna have no advertising in Sail Magazine at all.

This test was a very "biased" test when it comes to the CQR & Claw but not their competitors. They went so far as to have indepth discussions to figure out a way to get the Bruce and CQR to set better so they could at least get load test results. Now this test was only a hard sand test so you can't translate these results to a soft mud bottom but the authors made it quite clear that these were hard sand tests...

Here's a direct quote: "The CQR is another tried-and-true anchor that yielded surprising results. The maximum load we recorded during our first three pulls on 5:1 scope was a very short spike up to 350 pounds, but most of the time we never felt the anchor set. No matter how slowly we went or how we tried to manually coax the anchor to set, it seemed to just skip along the surface of the bottom."

This to me sounds like they perhaps had to give the CQR a little "extra" by going slower than with other anchors and trying to manually coax it to set. How can anyone claim bias against the CQR when they potentially gave it preferential treatment? This seems a little unfair if you are replicating test results using the SAME technique with all anchors to make it as fair as possible. The results don't surprise me as I own a Bruce and a CQR and though they perform well they are not always quick setters (CQR) or high holding (Bruce). My assertion that 80% of boaters never actually set an anchor and get very lucky using basically a "rope on a rock" seems more true than ever.

Last summer on a friends boat he left me at the helm while he went to drop his CQR. I backed down, like I always do, gradually increasing to 80% throttle and the anchor dragged!

Here's how the conversation went "Geez that's never happened before","Really? Lets try it again",.

On the second attempt it had an initial bite (starting to burry) but when I applied power it broke free. "Your giving it to much throttle and ripping it out of the bottom", "it's an anchor!", "let me try", "ok".

So I now go up to let the anchor down & he puts the boat in reverse gets it moving and then puts it in neutral and we get an initial bite. "There see it's set", "No it's just starting to dig in it now needs to be set", "It's always held me before", "Have you ever experienced a 30 knot blow on the hook?", "No" "Well a 30 knot blow on your boat is the equivalent of roughly 900 pounds of pull on the anchor did you know that?", "No", "Did you know that the motor on this boat can barely re-produce 350 pounds of pull wide open?" "No", "Well let's let it set your way and in a couple of hours we'll simulate 20 knots of wind with the motor and see and happens", "You're on". You can probably guess what happened. Because we never properly set the anchor it dragged! We did get it to set that day using a 10:1 scope then shortening to 5:1. My friend could not beleive that the CQR could hold his boat using 80% throttle and was totally surprised by it! Scary I know.... From my experience I find a CQR likes a minimum of a 7:1 to set but it sometimes prefers more..

He now understands that an anchor should hold your boat at wide open in reverse without moving. This is a guy who has been sailing for 25 years and admittedly dragged "perhaps 20 times but never with my CQR"! Once is to much! It's imperative the anchor gets "set" properly. Yes the CQR sets better in soft bottoms than in sand but not all boaters are lucky enough to always drop the hook in a soft bottom. So if you're in a hard bottom make sure to get it set. The CQR will set well but it may take more than one attempt. Don't ever be fooled by the "initial bite". With a CQR this is a situation whre the anchor is laying on it's side with the tip just starting to dig in. Like the picture at the beginning of Sail Magazines article. If you stop there on any sort of wind or current shift the anchor will twist out. A CQR needs to be vertical and burried to the shank or it's not properly set. If it's properly burried it can sometimes survive a 180 shift witout "breaking free". I suggest some of you begin diving on your anchors in a shallow spot to see what's going on down there I think you'd be surprised...

[Mike Thompson]

Many of the sail boats resident in the Penobscot Bay, Maine seem to be using Danforth, CQR or Bruce. I can't speak for the large sailboats that pass through in the summer because I haven't paid attention to their anchors. So having just read the SAIL article on their testing and read that the anchors just mentioned have hardly any holding power, I must seriously ask what does it mean?

I have not experienced dragging except when anchoring with a short shope of, say 3:1. Almost all the anchorages here are mud, nice black mud. You can read in a guidebook whether a harbor has something different from this. Many are extremely well sheltered. With weather forecast giving plenty of warning and HAVEN never being more than a few hours sail from shelter, is this test relevent to the small boat owner? The figure 5000 pounds pull is hardly relevant for a CD28.

Also the test seems extreme - a bit like testing house nails with a sledge hammer. Finishing Nails would be found to have no holding power at all every time they entered the wood sideways or bent in the middle.

[mahalocd36]

Many of the sail boats resident in the Penobscot Bay, Maine seem to be using Danforth, CQR or Bruce. ...... So having just read the SAIL article on their testing and read that the anchors just mentioned have hardly any holding power, I must seriously ask what does it mean?
..... Almost all the anchorages here are mud, nice black mud.

Hi Mike,
I read the SAIL article for myself as well. Note that the SAIL tests were all done in hard sand. Not what we find here in most of the Northeast, especially Maine. Since your anchor type should be picked by what's on the bottom, the tests published in SAIL are only relevant for hard sand, IMHO.

The final paragraph of the article states: "Anchor design is evolving, but our results still confirm the rule of thumb that every boat should carry at least 3 different anchor designs and weights to deal with a wide variety of bottom types".

The previous owners of Mahalo spent their summers in Maine. The boat came with two Bruce (real Bruce, not Lewmar claw) anchors. Since we felt that 2 of the same anchor was a bit redundant, we swapped out one of the Bruce's for a Delta. (Originally for a CQR, but that didn't hang on our roller right, so swapped for a Delta). So all our anchoring the first year was on Bruce's and all our anchoring since has been with the Delta. (There might have been some in the middle there with the CQR...) Never dragged with either.

I think it's what you feel comfortable with, and as everyone has mentioned, the technique is more than anything. We always let the anchor and the boat settle a bit before backing down on it hard. I've seen a few times people drop the anchor and rush back to the helm and throw it in hard reverse to "set" it before it was even "set" to begin with, and just drag it. We watched a guy in Hadley harbor do this three times before proclaiming loudly "You just can't anchor here!" to all the boats anchored around. Pretty funny.

Another thing I noticed about this test is that they were testing anchors appropriate for a 35-40 foot boat, but only used 20 feet of chain. I've always read that you should at least have a foot of chain per boat-length, so I wonder if their results would have been any different with 40 feet of chain. Maybe not, just curious.

Also they didn't do any "wind shift" kind of tests. I don't think there are too many nights in New England where the wind stays from the same direction

[Clay Stalker]

The reason most world cruisers use a CQR is because most of them also use an all chain rode. The CQR will not set well without a lot of chain, which is why on my 28 footer I was using 50' of chain with the rest 3 strand nylon. The extra weight of the chain puts the CQR in the right position to set quickly, and this is what I always experienced with it. After reading the Sail article, it comes as no surprise to me that the CQR didn't set well with just 20' of chain for a 40-45 foot boat. And I agree with Melissa....a test of just hard sand bottom is very limited in useful information, as this is the least seen type of bottom in most anchorages, especially New England.

Clay Stalker

[j2sailor]

The only tests I trust come from "been-there-done-that" cruising folks. I carried 6 anchors aboard my CD-27 and used all at one time or another. 4 Bruces ((2) 2.5 lb (dinghy and throwing-kedges), 16.5 lb(working) and 22 lb (heavy-weather or storm)), a Luke-40 (storm) and Danforth Hi-Tensile 12 pounder (left-over from other boats owned). The only dragging problem I experienced wasn't one of my anchors.

A beefy Westsail-32 on short scope dragged into my little beauty at 2 in the morning. Now that's an interesting wake-up call! She ended up wedged against the bow-pulpit. Our little 16.5 lb Bruce never budged.

The hook on the end is but one part of the entire ground-tackle system. The guy that dragged into us was anchored with a 35 lb CQR. The anchor didn't fail. Inadequate scope caused his problem...