Who wants a new anchor for Christmas?

[wotayottie]

10 times the price???????????????? RUBBISH

Mild Steel - no - they are an expensive Bismuth Steel. Yes - cheap anchors could well be made out of mild steel, so watch out - you gets what you pay for, to think anything else is naive.

"bismuth steel" is mild steel. All it is is mild steel treated with bismuth to make it freecutting ( ie when turning for example, the chips come off cleanly). It replaces the leaded freecutting steels because of HS concerns about lead, and it isnt at all expensive. Nor is it anything exotic. Nor is it a particularly strong steel.

It would be better is an anchor which depends on a sharp point for penetration were made of a harder carbon or low alloy steel since by definition a sharp point is thin and easily bent.

Personally I see nothing wrong with the price. Why bother to invent a new product and bring it to market if you cant make a decent margin on it? Anchors arent exactly high volume things anyway - how many have you bought in your life?

 

[Ubergeekian]

The more important figures are the averaged holding power bars in black. The measure is a scaled holding power per-unit-of-weight, so a directly fair comparison across the range.

It's a pretty pointless comparison, though. Why choose weight rather than area, or length, or price? When the Fortress (remember them?) was the wonder anchor various tests showed that weight for weight it was superior to the Danforth. Size for size, though, it was practically the same - which in view of the similarity of design, is no great surprise. Pricing, though, was basically by size, so a Fortress and Danforth of the same size cost more-or-less the same.

Which is fine - if you want that sort of anchor and don't mind aluminium, it may well make sense to have something lighter. However, it did make the weight-for-weight comparisons a bit inappropriate, because very few people would have considered buying either a Danforth or a Fortress twice the size and twice the price.

 

[Richard10002]

Hmm. Perhaps the east coast river boys will go for them, but I think I'll avoid an anchor which can't cope with hitting rocks, thanks.



Yup, the strength shown in that picture certainly demonstrates why people buy CQRs. And just think how well dug in it must have been.

Don't get me wrong - I am sure your design is wonderful for occasional use over the short term in easy bottoms, and is probably an ideal buy in the lunch hook market. It's just that for longer distance cruising I'd prefer something a bit more robust.

In one breath you criticise the Rocna for a tiny bend after hitting/jamming in rocks, but in another you praise a CQR because it bent under strain..... you cant have it both ways, and have to make your mind up.

There is no doubt that the newer anchors set and hold better than the older ones and, whilst you might deny it, you are deluding only yourself.

 

[craigsmith]

Chris-Robb has seen the Australian steel brand Bisalloy and confused it with bismuth. The Rocna uses a [rather costly] high tensile 800 grade Q&T steel. It is needed to meet strength requirements. Such specs which are not visible or obvious to the shopper in a chandlery are the first to get compromised with the real cheapies.

Orbister you are a troll who is either deliberately obstinate or willfully ignorant. Go start an argument about seahorses.

 

[toad_oftoadhall]

Orbister you are a troll who is either deliberately obstinate or willfully ignorant.

Given where Orbister lives I doubt he's ignorant of this subject willfully or otherwise.

 

[doug748]

If you buy into the drop-forged line and really think a CQR is all that, you are seriously misled. Even between the old generation anchors, in tests the cast Bruce is around 3x stronger. Here's some more of that perspective - genuine CQR:

Well if you tell me it is a genuine CQR then fine.
You must admit it does look like a stainless steel copy......look particularly at that pin.

 

[Moodyjim]

Well my old Bruce either obstinately or willfully refused to set most of the time. My new Rocna sets immediately and under power astern digs deeper and deeper. Rocna for me mate - long term not just for lunchtime during which you are no doubt a legend! Look at the reports of long term sailing folk who use them and other NG anchors in preference to OG units.

 

[Chris_Robb]

Chris-Robb has seen the Australian steel brand Bisalloy and confused it with bismuth. The Rocna uses a [rather costly] high tensile 800 grade Q&T steel. It is needed to meet strength requirements. Such specs which are not visible or obvious to the shopper in a chandlery are the first to get compromised with the real cheapies.

Orbister you are a troll who is either deliberately obstinate or willfully ignorant. Go start an argument about seahorses.

Ah - I new it sounded like that! just testing Craig!

 

[Twister_Ken]

Q&T?

 

[wotayottie]

Chris-Robb has seen the Australian steel brand Bisalloy and confused it with bismuth. The Rocna uses a [rather costly] high tensile 800 grade Q&T steel. It is needed to meet strength requirements. Such specs which are not visible or obvious to the shopper in a chandlery are the first to get compromised with the real cheapies.

.

You are undoubtedly right about the cheepies, but I'm confused about the Rocna steel spec. Bisalloy dont have anything called an 800 grade, and whilst I'm pretty rusty these days, I dont remember any SAE 800 or anything like it. Which probably means nothing in practise.

But what is the steel spec used in a Rocna in standard terms ie SAE or Din or EN

 

[Ubergeekian]

In one breath you criticise the Rocna for a tiny bend after hitting/jamming in rocks, but in another you praise a CQR because it bent under strain..... you cant have it both ways, and have to make your mind up.

The business bit of the rocna bent. The shank of the CQR bent. Subtle difference.

There is no doubt that the newer anchors set and hold better than the older ones and, whilst you might deny it, you are deluding only yourself.

Different types of anchor set and hold better in different conditions. And, if you read my contributions, you'll see that I do not doubt the effectiveness of whizzy new anchor designs. What I do doubt is their durability, as a result of the flimsiness which makes them effective at setting and holding.

Life's full of compromises, and this is one. Want a lunch hook for occasional use on sandy or muddy bottoms? Buy a Rocna or a Fortress. Want something which will take multiple bad weather poundings on rocky shores? Buy something a bit more solid. Want something which only has to set once? Buy a mushroom, or an old railway wheel.

 

[Ubergeekian]

Chris-Robb has seen the Australian steel brand Bisalloy and confused it with bismuth. The Rocna uses a [rather costly] high tensile 800 grade Q&T steel. It is needed to meet strength requirements.

Most high tensile steels suffer badly in toughness. Can you point me at the specs of the stuff you use?

Orbister you are a troll who is either deliberately obstinate or willfully ignorant. Go start an argument about seahorses.

You are welcome to that opinion. I am not, however, trying to sell any sort of anchor here. You'll note, from above, that I don't even use a CQR!

 

[Amulet]

Anchor schwanchor

I feel that I ought to be losing sleep over this. Amulet has been lying to the same CQR since 1964, obviously exposing me, my family and others to four decades of extreme danger.

 

[rich]

PBO did a test on products like the one we sold (no names here) they had the test done by our opposition company, who do you think came out best.

 

[Deleted member 36384]

PBO did a test on products like the one we sold (no names here) they had the test done by our opposition company, who do you think came out best.

Ahmmm..... the one with the biggest advertising account at IPC magazines!

 

[Moodyjim]

Personaly I try not to anchor multilple times on rocky shores in bad weather, or even once if it's avoidable.

 

[toad_oftoadhall]

I feel that I ought to be losing sleep over this. Amulet has been lying to the same CQR since 1964, obviously exposing me, my family and others to four decades of extreme danger.

Surely that's just evidence of how dangerous using a CQR is? They seem to work for nigh on 50 years then one day out of the blue...

 

[wotayottie]

Try and design a way of testing a variety of anchors in a manner which which would compare each anchor fairly. I think, without mega-resources, it's next to impossible.

You'd need an entirely uniform sea bed (you can't reuse the same bit because it will have been disturbed by the previous testee). Actually, you'd need a selection of them, mud, soft sand, hard sand, shingle, sand with rocks, weed cover, etc.

I think the only sound way would be statistical - say 200 random sets of each anchor. The problem with trying to base on tests in a standardised sea bottom is real life anchoring is never like that. What matters in real life is the chance of the anchor biting first time and then holding wheen you havent really got much of an idea what its digging into. If you knew that over a statistically sound sample of random anchorings, a Rocna was say 84% likely to bite and hold up to F6 whilst a cqr was 57% then you have some really useful info.

Problem is of course that this is a very expensive way of flogging magazines so it wont happen

 

[CaptainBob]

How about if someone set up a system online which allowed people to enter the following data:

Date
Location
Duration at location
Average Depth
Sea State
Wind Strength
Bottom
Anchor Make/Model
Anchor Weight
Rode Type
Rode Length
Boat Type
Boat Length
Boat Weight
Number of attempts before set
Did it drag after set

As data built up it would become quite clear... but thinking about the logistics of this, it's pointless. Those with a vested interest would be far more motivated to enter data than those without. Bound to end up being biased one way or another. Even if it was limited to registered users.

 

[timbartlett]

And when some poor sod has done his best to produce a fair test within the constraints of time, budget, manpower, and weather, written it up as fairly as he can, and has ridden out the abuse and threats from all the companies whose products didn't win.... someone gets on Scuttlebut and accuses him of being prejudiced in favour of the company with the biggest advertising budget.
Someone else claims that the magazine is too thin to be worth buying (because the money spent on the anchor test has eaten up the budget that could have bought at least half a dozen "through France to the Med" articles from readers.)
Been there, done that, got the T-shirt.
(And someone else complains that it's all a fix anyway, because some other company has published a vaguely similar article at about the same time.)