Honest opinions/ experience with Delta anchors?

[Dockhead]

Don't want to prolong the thread unneccessarily as Puddock seems happy with his answers but I am intrigued by the substitution of a 55kg. Rocna for a 25kg. Delta.
Where were you planning to go?

I am of the school that you never know where and in what your life will depend on your anchor holding, so on all of my boats I have always tried to have maximum feasible ground tackle on board.

I realize that UK sailing is not as demanding as you chaps have a world-class port every 10 miles or so (it seems), and are thus never far from a good hidey-hole, and besides that spend most of your nights in port anyway. I grew up sailing in the US where there may be days between decent ports, and while cruising you spend almost all of your nights at anchor, sometimes in storms.

My only really frightening experiences over decades of sailing have been anchor-related.

So when I upgraded the ground tackle on my Moody 54 I basically chose the biggest anchor which I thought would fit the bow roller. 25kg was definitely undersized for the boat, which is about 55 feet LOA and 22 metric tons loaded. 55kg is pretty typical anyway for hard core cruisers in 50 to 55 foot boats. It's only one size bigger than the Rocna recommendation, which is 40kg.

The 55kg Rocna is probably overkill for the UK South Coast, but where ground tackle is concerned overkill is a good thing. There is no such thing as being too secure at anchor. Besides that, I plan to keep the boat for a long time and plan to roam far and wide and I will certainly be in some places which are more demanding of my ground tackle, than the UK South Coast.

The anchor doesn't look stupid on the bow of the boat (I think it looks about right), and the extra 15kg compared to the recommended 40kg anchor don't affect trim at all (I have 100 metres of 12mm chain on board, the weight of which dwarfs the weight of the anchor itself). It is, however, somewhat difficult to handle, and required work on my windlass clutches and the installation of a giant (and costly) Kong swivel to get it to self-stow properly. In case the electric windlass were to fail -- God forbid -- it would be a real challenge getting the ground tackle up, but again, the chain would be the biggest part of that problem. But I consider all of this a small price to pay for sleep at anchor!

Incidentally, kudos are owed to Craig Smith of Rocna, who was very generous with his time and knowledge in helping me figure out how to make the anchor work on my boat. I know he irritates a lot of people here (including myself) with his tireless (and shameless) propagandizing, but I got to know an entirely different side of him when I encountered problems with my installation! Thanks again, Craig.

 

[Dockhead]

One of the best anchors I have seen (could be that the owner knows what he is doing) is the Spade, very impressed!

The last anchor on our previous boat was a Spade; it is a superb anchor. I would have bought another one for the new boat but they are not really distributed in the UK and they are much more expensive than Rocnas.

We had the Spade for about seven years and it performed phenomenally well. Rode out a number of serious storms with it, sometimes on short scope, and never budged an inch. Never had trouble setting it even in difficult bottoms. Head and shoulders better than any of our previous anchors, a very noticeable difference.

If our new Rocna turns out to be equally good to our previous Spade, I will be completely satisfied! The design is similar, so I'm hoping. Some say the Rocna is even better. We shall see.

 

[Mitchellsbouy]

Thanks to all of you for your feedback. Mainly positive and sounds like it wasn't such a bad buy after all.
Thanks also, for not turning it into another anchor slanging match

Hi folks,
thanks for raising this question, I have a similar dilemma myself right now and the answers have helped me too
I just bought a Fjord CS28 and don't trust what's in the locker so want either a Delta or Rocna for the Isles of Scilly this summer. My yacht ownership is only 3 years after 9 years of IRC racing but the anchor never needed deploying during that time so your experiences shared are very helpful and yes, it's quite nice to see just honest personal experiences shared not conflicts between what's right for one being wrong for another, that's a very welcome and refreshing change so I'm obviously in the right forum
Have a great weekend and fair winds to one and all , Mark , Fowey

 

[vyv_cox]

Hi folks,
thanks for raising this question, I have a similar dilemma myself right now and the answers have helped me too
I just bought a Fjord CS28 and don't trust what's in the locker so want either a Delta or Rocna for the Isles of Scilly this summer. My yacht ownership is only 3 years after 9 years of IRC racing but the anchor never needed deploying during that time so your experiences shared are very helpful and yes, it's quite nice to see just honest personal experiences shared not conflicts between what's right for one being wrong for another, that's a very welcome and refreshing change so I'm obviously in the right forum
Have a great weekend and fair winds to one and all , Mark , Fowey

Six years on my opinion has not changed

 

[cindersailor]

I used a 10 Kg Delta on my Varne 27 (3 tons) for a good few years, but lost confidence in it after two dragging incidents, one in very soft sand, in which it provided very little holding, and another on hard sand with a light covering of weed where it became clogged with weed before it would dig in. I replaced with a 12 Kg Rocna Vulcan which I have now used for one season. I have been very impressed and have had to change anchoring technique as it digs in where it is dropped and no allowance for a 'setting drag' is needed. I once tested its setting ability in sand by letting out the whole scope before motoring back at full throttle, it stopped the boat so quickly that I will never try it again for fear of ripping the cleat out of the deck! The Vulcan has no roll bar, but its clever design ensures that it rolls over to the setting attitude very quickly, although it mostly seems to fall the right way up in any case. Worth considering if a roll bar is an issue, and cheaper than a Spade.

 

[RichardS]

Six years on my opinion has not changed

And mine now would be exactly the same as yours was (if you get my drift)

Richard

 

[Neeves]

And mine now would be exactly the same as yours was (if you get my drift)

Richard

If you are drifting, maybe you need a new anchor

Jonathan

 

[Dockhead]

I've used a couple of them over some years.

The first one was a great leap forward from its predecessor, a CQR. Far easier to set, and I don't believe I ever once dragged anchor with either Delta. But could be hard or impossible to set in certain bottom types.

The change from Delta to a heavier Rocna was a similar leap in efficiency, as Delta was to CQR, in my experience.

Delta is a good anchor, but the next generation of anchors (Rocna, Manson, Mantus, Spade) will be still much better for you, and noticeably so, I would guess.

Whatever anchor you use, if you can size it one size larger than recommended, this will make a big difference in performance.

After using a 55kg Rocna for a few years, I went back to Spade, which I had used on a previous boat. Of all of these anchors, in my experience, it sets the most aggressively and most reliably. Another big benefit of the Spade is that it has lead ballast and is much better balanced, so much easier to retrieve. You don't need a swivel with it, unlike the case with the Rocna, which is balanced to come up upside down. The same balance issue I believe affects the setting behavior -- the unballasted Rocna needs the hoop to turn it into the seabed mechanically, whereas the Spade goes in naturally.

Big downside of the Spade is that it is poorly finished, and can't be regalvanised because of the lead ballast. Plus very expensive. So everything is a compromise, as usual with boats

 

[Bitterend]

I have a Delta which I used for two years without a problem though it was always in reasonable shelter unless the wind was below 15 kts. It set very quickly and well in Canna for instance, I have had trouble there in the past with a CQR and had to resort to using a lighter Bruce.
For a second (temporarily promoted to first) anchor, last year I bought a Manson Supreme of the same weight. I developed great confidence in it too, mainly because of the speed with which it set and pulled the boat to a stop, until this year at WHYW in Tobermory, when it was difficult to set and dragged twice in quite light wind. Never had any problem with the Delta there so the Delta may be promoted back to bower. With an awkward pulpit and crowded foredeck the Delta is much easier to manipulate and stow in the anchor locker, an important issue with roll bar anchors if like, me you dont want to keep it permanently over the bow.
However the bottom in the inshore anchoring space by the waterfall at T'mory slopes very steeply, there was no room for a lot of scope, and we had a lot of kelp coming up (despite the popularity of the anchorage) and the boats anchored around us were dragging too, so this one failure may not be a fair basis on which to make a comparison. On the West coast I think that anything that will set and bury will hold, once either of them are in you are safe, in the clear water over the sand in the Bull Hole the Manson was completely below the surface along with about a metre of chain. I have regularly used CQR and Bruce anchors here in the past and I prefer the Delta to either of these, my preference against the Manson still needs more testing.

 

[Bitterend]

Ludd has a Delta on his Rassy Nab35 . It has held well everywhere he has set it when I've been with him, including on a short scope when we were stormbound in the Sancti Petri canal, Portugal. We couldn't lengthen the scope as we were the last boat to find an anchorage adjacent to mudflats.

 

[PaulJ]

No anchor will hold 100% of the time in all conditions on all bottoms. In our 8yr circumnavigation in a heavy 39ft steel boat, our 25Kg Delta only refused to set or needed re-setting on a handfull of occasions. A Delta is as good as you will find and I would happily have another as my main anchor.....

 

[Robin]

We inherited a 35lb Delta with the Sun Legende 41 we owned in the UK. That anchor was one size below recommended yet always set fast and held in some pretty wild conditions over the years. Our current USA based boat came with a 'dock queen' polished stainless Lewmar claw, typically in doodle land tied to a short bit of chain, and a mile of string. As part of our new owner refit we replaced the ground tackle with an all new 3/8" or 10mm all chain rode and a Delta 45lb ( one size up from what we had on the Sun Legende and from the recommended size for the 36ft Beneteau we now own). Prices here are higher, a Spade was on my shop list until I saw the local prices, Rocna's roll bar would be a PITA on our bow and their quality was under scrutiny at the time too. I opted for a cost effective one size bigger Delta ( could have gone two sizes up for the price of a Spade or Mantus) Not experience strong winds in exposed spots yet like we did before but am confident my choice will serve us well and it is very much the preferred local choice on boats cruising where we currently do.

I always felt that snatch loads were a significant cause of anchors dragging and rigged a snubber line to reduce this, currently a snubber 'bridle' with rubber mooring compensators in each arm, previously a single line one with dog bone compenstor wound in but the current foredeck cleat/ bow roller arrangement better suits a bridle.