Hydrobubble anchor......cheap copy??

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melandnick

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This may be a really stupid question but.....
If the bubble on a hydrobubble anchor keeps it upright during lowering and means that it always lands in the correct attitude then would a small fender or buoy tied to the crown of any anchor not have the same effect?
If it does then why don’t we all do this as a matter of course?
Nick
 
melandnick said:
This may be a really stupid question but.....
If the bubble on a hydrobubble anchor keeps it upright during lowering and means that it always lands in the correct attitude then would a small fender or buoy tied to the crown of any anchor not have the same effect?
If it does then why don’t we all do this as a matter of course?
Nick
Click to expand...

I think the whole concept for the Hydrobubble is crazy. It reminds me that most fishing lures are created to catch he fishermen in the store rather than the fish at sea.

What makes an anchor dig in is weight at the point and sharp points. The bars on a Danforth also help to position the flukes. The trouble with a Hydrobubble is that ..... from the few people I know that have tried one ..... it is very prone to fouling the rode.
 
Actually it's not a completely stupid concept, although in practice it's certainly a gimmick. The bubble is of necessity plastic, prone to mechanical wear/damage and UV deterioration.

It also negatively affects the anchor's ability to set deeply, and of course subtracts from the anchor's total underwater weight. And has other practical effects not properly thought through, such as nicely trapping the rode as TWS points out.

You could not "tie" a fender to any anchor I could think off as there would be no appropriate point. It needs to form a rigid leverage opposing the weight of the anchor opposite the tip, the farther away from the roll axis the better. The upper extremity of something like a Rocna roll-bar would be the right place, but as above it would do more harm than good. Rocna stainless anchors have their roll-bars enclosed, thus filled with air, so in theory that provides some buoyancy - makes no practical difference to anything though.

The HydroBubble guy once said that their anchor works better in deeper water, as the bubble generates more buoyancy. I suppose they imagine the anchor will float in sufficiently deep water. That should give you an insight into their "conception" and general design abilities.
 
craigsmith said:
Actually it's not a completely stupid concept, although in practice it's certainly a gimmick. The bubble is of necessity plastic, prone to mechanical wear/damage and UV deterioration.

It also negatively affects the anchor's ability to set deeply, and of course subtracts from the anchor's total underwater weight. And has other practical effects not properly thought through, such as nicely trapping the rode as TWS points out.

You could not "tie" a fender to any anchor I could think off as there would be no appropriate point. It needs to form a rigid leverage opposing the weight of the anchor opposite the tip, the farther away from the roll axis the better. The upper extremity of something like a Rocna roll-bar would be the right place, but as above it would do more harm than good. Rocna stainless anchors have their roll-bars enclosed, thus filled with air, so in theory that provides some buoyancy - makes no practical difference to anything though.

The HydroBubble guy once said that their anchor works better in deeper water, as the bubble generates more buoyancy. I suppose they imagine the anchor will float in sufficiently deep water. That should give you an insight into their "conception" and general design abilities.
Click to expand...

Interesting.
If I remember correctly from my freediving days, there is something called Boyles law that states that the deeper something is, the more pressure exerted on it and the less volume and therefore buoyancy it has.
Same reason a diver becomes more negatively buoyant the deeper he goes (makes it a bitch to fin back up from anything under 30m!).
So it seems that he is talking nonsense.
Unless one of the more informed forumites know better?
Balance wise, surely the bar across the flukes of a genuine CQR would be the perfect point to tie a float on to........possibly giving the PERFECT anchor!!!!

Nick
 
If the bubble compresses appreciably. I don't expect it would make any real difference. In any case: precisely.

The CQR doesn't 'need' a way to right itself, that is the point of the articulation, to avoid it. Any buoyancy would be only negative.
 
I am new to this forum and realize that this is and old thread but would like to make a comment as a Hydro Bubble user.
I have seven years and 10,000 miles of with a 55lb Hydro Bubble anchor and I can only tell you that your comments above are with out experience or you would never have made them.
Hydro bubble is the best anchor I have ever used in a lifetime of sailing that goes back to the 1960's. Sets immediately in all bottoms,does not foul it's rode and has never dragged and inch in all kinds of weather. I owned a CQR previously and considered it junk.
 
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