Ray Purchase
Member
Is this how you do it?
What's the worst anchor?
- Thread starter zoidberg
- Start date
zoidberg
Well-known member
Aren't we all....?I see you are very gradually working your way up the anchor performance scale.
srm
Well-known member
Almost. We used to flake the rope moorings for oceanographic instruments on the deck of a supply ship, lower the instruments and their sub surface buoy over the side, then push the instrument mooring weights over and stand well clear as we moved ahead to lay out the bottom rope, second mooring weight and pick up rope + buoy.
srm
Well-known member
I always used an anchor with a mooring weight. Otherwise there is a risk of the weight being steadily bounced along the bottom due to wind/wave action on the boat. Unless the mooring weight is in sticky mud that will slowly absorb it with the suction making it almost impossible to lift.
Mister E
Well-known member
How about this one?
bergie
Active member
As Indy would say: it belongs to a museum!
(Again a Roman anchor, from Cartagena museum of maritime archaeology)
jbweston
Well-known member
An interesting metric - one I've never seen calculated arithmetically but many of us estimate roughly in our heads - is holding power per £1 or $1 spent on buying the anchor.
This is why those of us that don't need maximum theoretical holding power for a particular sixe of anchor whatever the cost bimble along very happily with any old anchor that works OK for us.
By this metric an old concrete block rescued from a skip has a factor of near infinity, far better than any Rocna or Epsilon or NewFangler Mk V. Because its holding power of b* all divided by the 50p given to your 7 year old son to help you carry it home is a very big number indeed. I'm not advocating a concrete block, but I think this is one of the reasons people end up using a bundle of rebar or a 70 year old Danforth with bent flukes.
This is why those of us that don't need maximum theoretical holding power for a particular sixe of anchor whatever the cost bimble along very happily with any old anchor that works OK for us.
By this metric an old concrete block rescued from a skip has a factor of near infinity, far better than any Rocna or Epsilon or NewFangler Mk V. Because its holding power of b* all divided by the 50p given to your 7 year old son to help you carry it home is a very big number indeed. I'm not advocating a concrete block, but I think this is one of the reasons people end up using a bundle of rebar or a 70 year old Danforth with bent flukes.
zoidberg
Well-known member
jbweston
Well-known member
Are those pillows? The sea bed, I presume.
bergie
Active member
Could be lift bags (not a good anchor!). I think that was a demonstration on how they salvage these wrecks.
Sea Change
Well-known member
That reminds me. A few years ago a couple of guys I worked with were trying to lower a go pro to check something. They looked around the workboat for the biggest, heaviest object they could find, and chose the 'priest'- a stout plastic rod, similar in size to a rolling pin, used for killing fish. They spent an inordinate length of time tying it to the go-pro, before proudly committing the whole lot to the deep, trusted to a spool of twine.
Whereupon the go-pro, lagged to the polythene priest, bobbed back to the surface and slowly drifted off on the tide...
noelex
Well-known member
Another vote:
A Kobra (Mk2) with a missing bolt.
The Kobra is not a terrible anchor, being slightly better than the Delta in my view. It does not deserve to be in the worst anchor category. But check the locking bolt. It lies under the anchor so it is difficult to inspect from the boat.
When sitting on the bow roller, the anchor and fluke hang in the normal position even with the bolt is missing so the problem is not obvious. If the bolt works loose the anchor does not work. It even seems to balance with the fluke above the substrate where the holding power is non existent (see the underwater photo that I took after the anchor had dragged hundreds of metres).
This yachtsman anchored multiple times, but dragged on each occasion. I was intrigued to see what was the problem so I dived to see why the Kobra would not set.
It was obvious underwater that the bolt retaining the fluke at correct orientation was missing. It took some time before I could convince the skipper of the real problem (we did not share a common language), but eventually he understood and replaced the bolt and the anchor set normally.
Check the bolt or bolts on your Kobra, Spade, Mantus or Viking anchor occasionally especially if the nut or nuts are hidden under the fluke and it is a single bolt, as it is on some designs. This will avoid your anchor qualifying in the worst anchor category. Especially if I am around to document the mistake.
A Kobra (Mk2) with a missing bolt.
The Kobra is not a terrible anchor, being slightly better than the Delta in my view. It does not deserve to be in the worst anchor category. But check the locking bolt. It lies under the anchor so it is difficult to inspect from the boat.
When sitting on the bow roller, the anchor and fluke hang in the normal position even with the bolt is missing so the problem is not obvious. If the bolt works loose the anchor does not work. It even seems to balance with the fluke above the substrate where the holding power is non existent (see the underwater photo that I took after the anchor had dragged hundreds of metres).
This yachtsman anchored multiple times, but dragged on each occasion. I was intrigued to see what was the problem so I dived to see why the Kobra would not set.
It was obvious underwater that the bolt retaining the fluke at correct orientation was missing. It took some time before I could convince the skipper of the real problem (we did not share a common language), but eventually he understood and replaced the bolt and the anchor set normally.
Check the bolt or bolts on your Kobra, Spade, Mantus or Viking anchor occasionally especially if the nut or nuts are hidden under the fluke and it is a single bolt, as it is on some designs. This will avoid your anchor qualifying in the worst anchor category. Especially if I am around to document the mistake
.
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Neeves
Well-known member
Another vote:
A Kobra (Mk2) with a missing bolt.
The Kobra is not a terrible anchor, being slightly better than the Delta in my view. It does not deserve to be in the worst anchor category. But check the locking bolt. It lies under the anchor so it is difficult to inspect from the boat.
When sitting on the bow roller, the anchor and fluke hang in the normal position even with the bolt is missing so the problem is not obvious. If the bolt works loose the anchor does not work. It even seems to balance with the fluke above the substrate where the holding power is non existent (see the underwater photo that I took after the anchor had dragged hundreds of metres).
This yachtsman anchored multiple times, but dragged on each occasion. I was intrigued to see what was the problem so I dived to see why the Kobra would not set.
It was obvious underwater that the bolt retaining the fluke at correct orientation was missing. It took some time before I could convince the skipper of the real problem (we did not share a common language), but eventually he understood and replaced the bolt and the anchor set normally.
Check the bolt or bolts on your Kobra, Spade, Mantus or Viking anchor occasionally especially if the nut or nuts are hidden under the fluke and it is a single bolt, as it is on some designs. This will avoid your anchor qualifying in the worst anchor category. Especially if I am around to document the mistake
View attachment 182941
Viking and Odin use Nyloc nuts, and lots of them, - they should not come loose. Spade use a bolt with a hole that allows a split pin to secure the nut. The nut could be replaced by a Nyloc nut and spit pin - real bent and braces.
Nyloc nuts are not a panacea - if you release the nut regularly the nylon nut looses it securement characteristics. They are not single use but neither are they multiple use.
If you don't intend demounting the anchor .... use blue Loctite - its almost fool proof.
Jonathan
noelex
Well-known member
Another dismal anchor performance that I have observed.
This was a Delta anchor that managed to drag despite a long scope (7:1 ) and minimal average wind (20-25k). The puffs of sand show the anchor is moving in the gusts when the photograph was taken. That is our keel above the anchor. The anchor was under our boat at this stage.
The long mark in the second photograph shows part of the distance that this anchor had slowly dragged without being able to dig into the substrate.
The problem was the hard sand substrate that the Delta was unable to adequately penetrate.
Maybe not the worst anchor performance in history (the drag was only slow), but perhaps a good indication that this anchor does have limitations in less than ideal substrates.
This was a Delta anchor that managed to drag despite a long scope (7:1 ) and minimal average wind (20-25k). The puffs of sand show the anchor is moving in the gusts when the photograph was taken. That is our keel above the anchor. The anchor was under our boat at this stage.
The long mark in the second photograph shows part of the distance that this anchor had slowly dragged without being able to dig into the substrate.
The problem was the hard sand substrate that the Delta was unable to adequately penetrate.
Maybe not the worst anchor performance in history (the drag was only slow), but perhaps a good indication that this anchor does have limitations in less than ideal substrates.
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Neeves
Well-known member
Though the photography is stunning I do not believe that this is typical. Good and opportunistic photography does not a bad anchor make. There are members here and respected members (so that excludes me
- especially as my exposure to the Deltas is limited) who have used a Delta with complete success. It has endured since its inception in the 1980's and if the above photographic 'evidence' was typical, every day and common place it would have died the same death as the Hydrobubble and the Fluke. It would also never have achieved High Holding Power from Lloyds. All anchors can have a bad day - probably caused by newbie sailors or difficult seabeds - but Delta has endured because people did manage to engender success. Delta is not the lemon implied. It has been replaced - but that does not suddenly mean it was waste of time - Delta was state of the art but fortunately fo us technology does advance. The anchor was developed in the late 1980s to counter the success of the Bruce anchor (that was eating into Simpson Lawrence sales) and the CQR, Bruce and Delta (+ copies of all 3) were the anchors of choice till the West Marine/YM anchor test reported in 2006 - when Rocna and Supreme (and the Hydro-bubble etc) were introduced. Fortress is of a similar vintage to Delta and Spade was introduced (at least in France)a bit later in the 1990s. The Delta design as been much copied, especially the shank - copied for Spade, Rocna, Excel, Vulcan etc and many others - its legacy lives on.
Jonathan
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Porthandbuoy
Well-known member
I used to have a small, plastic coated, mushroom anchor weighing about 5lb with 50' or so of 3-strand nylon. Designed I think, for inflatable dinghies or canvas canoes as the plastic coating wouldn't damage the fabric.
I used it a few times but all it did was slow your drift while fiddling with the outboard (yes, a Seagull)
If I could find another one I'd get it, but this time use a lead cored warp, at least for the first 10' or so.
I used it a few times but all it did was slow your drift while fiddling with the outboard (yes, a Seagull)
If I could find another one I'd get it, but this time use a lead cored warp, at least for the first 10' or so.
zoidberg
Well-known member
You could explore 'The Midl Of Lidl' near you, as the stores often have fitness kit, quite cheap, that would seem to fit the description exactly.
vyv_cox
Well-known member
Almost the only failure to set experienced by one of our Deltas was immediately outside Pwllheli marina. This is basically a surf beach, very hard packed sand. The anchor utterly refused to set in numerous attempts, just dragging over the surface.
Neeves
Well-known member
But a Delta not setting is much more news worthy than a Delta anchor that is boringly well set and consistently reliable.
Bad news travels, good news...... simply is under the radar.
Jonathan
Neeves
Well-known member
Noelex,
You obviously have time on your hands - maybe you would like to comment on the contradictions of one of your other questionable posts.
Lewmar Epsilon
Jonathan