Which Anchor Lets You Sleep Best At Night?

[maxingout]

We hear a lot of debate about anchors, their virtues, costs, weights etc.

I am interested in a real world question. Which anchor lets you sleep best at night? I'm not talking theory. I'm talking about when you are out cruising, which anchors have dragged after dark, which anchors require an anchor watch in your own personal cruising experience?

My 45 pound CQR and 60 pound CQR did not let me sleep at night in many anchorages around the world when the wind picked up. I've had enough anchor drills in the darkness, that I would say that for me a CQR didn't guarantee a good night's sleep with my Privilege 39 catamaran and two-hundred feet of high-test chain.

On the other hand, my seventy pound Buegel has been a stellar performer. Sailing for two years from Australia to the USA, I never lost a night's sleep, and I never dragged anchor at night. So for me, my 70 lb Buegel is the real deal anchor that actually lets me sleep at night.

What are your real world night time anchoring experiences? What anchor lets you sleep at night?

[jrd22]

Max- that's not a good recommendation for CQR anchors. If a 60lb can't hold a 39' cat there is something wrong with the anchor. We have used a 33lb Bruce for many years on our 34', 13,000lb mono and have never drug anchcor, but max. wind has probably only been 30K with little to no swell. I have had a bit of trouble getting it to set in heavy grass, otherwise it sets almost instantly and resets with current reversals every time. I am currently looking at the Rocna 33(72lb) for our next boat, a 40 pilothouse, 24,000lb. Everyone that has one seems to rave about it ( except the price). I'll probably carry the 45 CQR that came with the boat as a secondary, unless I can find a used genuine Bruce around 60lb. This will be interesting to get a report on what actually works well for people.

John

[GMac]

I very much doubt any one 'anchor' will or should come out on top.

Chuck an anchor off your boat and what happens? You drift away.
Chuck a length of chain off your boat and what happens? You stay until the weather picks up and you drift away a bit slower.
Chuck an anchor attached to a chain (rode of some sort) and if you have it set-up well you'll stay put. Set it up poorly and you'll stay for a while until the weather turns bad and then you're off.

An 'anchor' in it's own right won't do diddly squat but a 'anchoring system' will.

It's surprisingly easy to get a 20lb anchor to out hold one twice the weight. It's all about 'the package' with a big whack of 'user' input.

How about we work on "What anchoring system allows you to sleep best at night". It would be a lot more informative.

What sort of rode do you have behind your anchors maxingout, all chain or a combo? Sizes? Those anchors should have been fine I would have thought.

[Frank, Southern Voyager]

I have a 43 foot heavy Monte Carlo (heavy) and i failed to sleep with my CQR anchor!!! since i have bought a ROCNA 25, i am sleeping like a log.
Easy to set and great holding power.
A few weeks ago a 47 foot motor cruiser rafted alongside (on my anchor) and the wind increased, peaking 15 knots and we were happily hanging without dragging a meter.

[MidLandOne]

Originally Posted by jrd22

Max- that's not a good recommendation for CQR anchors. If a 60lb can't hold a 39' cat there is something wrong with the anchor.

Actually, if a 60lb CQR cannot hold a 39 foot cat then there is something seriously wrong with the anchoring practice or the anchoring system.

[Steve Pope]

37' boat, Rocna 20, up to 50m chain depending on depth, ratio nothing under 3 to 1 and generally between 3 and 5 to 1. It could lull me into a sense of false security but so far it is streets ahead of the CQR type anchors I used previously.

[Island Mike]

We have a 40' 27000 lb sailboat, last weekend we purchased a 60lb manson from Defender for my primary anchor.
While I dont have any first hand expierence yet with this anchor, I did research the hell out of it, some of it here. We will be spending a lot of time on the hook, We hope this anchor will allow us get some sleep. We also have 250' of 3/8 chain, this will be my primary system.

[Ram]

In the Med. Im sleeping well with 130' HT 5/16 chain and 350 feet of 3/4 nylon rode attached to a Manson Supreme 45 lb anchor holds well in just about everything except rock

In retospect I would buy 200 feet of chain

[Vasco]

Used CQRs, Bruces now got a Manson Supreme 45# that replaced a 44# Bruce for a B393. Sleep every night. Also have 200' 3/8 chain. Have to say this is the best anchor I've ever had. My only worry now when it blows is that someone else is going to drag down on me!

[ssullivan]

I'm with Gmac and MidLandOne on this.

I've lived aboard for over 2 years on the hook most of the time with a 45lb CQR in a 45' 26,000lb monohull. Attached to that CQR was 200' of 3/8" BBB chain. I've been through tropical storm remnants that had the winds up to and around 60-70MPH and some squalls and thunderstorms that did the same. My anchor never dragged once.

The one and only time my anchor ever dragged was while setting it in the Great Lakes. I dropped it into a bunch of weeds and it had trouble finding the ground. It tangled in the weeds. And when it did find the bottom, it was trying to hold in a bunch of roots and plant life that didn't allow it to have a solid holding ground. It wasn't the anchor's fault. It was the anchorer's fault.

To be honest, with that CQR, I wan't even careful anchoring. I just dumped it overboard (manual windlass, so it goes fast), let the boat drift back a few feet and dumped out all my scope in a big pile all at once. The boat would then drift back, the CQR would catch, and I'd be in for a month at a time through any type of storms (only to 60-70MPH and 6' steep chop/breakers) without ever dragging. On topic, I slept through the night every night, except that thunder wakes me up.

My honest opinon is that most anchors are basically the same. It's your anchoring system that makes the difference.

This new cat I have is only a 10 meter. It has a 55lb Delta and about 150' of 3/8" BBB as well. I hook up the bridle to that and sleep like a baby.

Like what was said above, it's the anchoring system that is the key.

I prefer all chain, with a nice, long snubber/bridle that will just about touch the water when fully deployed. The long snubber (with rubber shock absorbers) helps to keep funny tugs and pulls from making their way to the anchor chain when the anchorage gets choppy. The chain also helps keep any tugs at a more "horizontal" direction, or parallel to the seabed. This means that any old anchor will work just fine at the end of the chain.

The anchor is really just a "hook" that hooks onto the seabed. The burying and plowing ones are all basically the same. The only thing that makes one drag are loads from the wrong angle (upward or far to one side), or setting it in a bottom that it can't hook on to - but if you do that, you know immediately, because your boat drags while you are setting the anchor.

Also, if you do end up tugging your CQR, Rocna, Manson, Delta, etc... out from a funny tug on it (upwards or in a bad wind/current reversal), it will just reset back into the bottom if the tugging is in a direction parallel to the seabed. How? A nice, heavy chain will keep the force in parallel with tht seabed even if you manage to pop the anchor out. It will just reset instantly.

Conclusion: It's the anchoring system, not the anchor that makes for a good night's sleep with the burying/plow type anchors. Of course, anchors like the Danforth or fisherman have less ability to reset after they break out, so I might not sleep so well if I had one of those - but they do have their purposes.

[bg9208]

Iam trying to find a European sales outlet for either Rocna or Bugel(Buegel
, Wasi) anchors. From the manufacturers sites one would think that they don't want to sell any of their anchors given the lack of basic information such as distributors, recommended prices and so on. Google leads to lots of totally irrelevant sites.

[pilot]

I bought my BUEGEL direct from the "inventer" (Holder of the patent).
Unfortunately I do not have a e-mail address but his fax number:

R. Kaczirek
Germany
Fax/Tel: 0049-4346-6347
He is shipping direct. The price list I still have, is even in German Mark. So not quite up to date!

We use the BUEGEL since years. Much improvement over our CQR we used before! Combined with up to 150 feet of chain.

[MidLandOne]

I have one of those anchors which some say are no good and always drag - whats more it is a copy to boot .

But I sleep well, however I am not sure why. Is it because the anchor never drags or is it because I always have deep sleep encouraging dreams about one day having a nice new shining stainless steel Supreme on the bow roller instead - so dreams stronger than fear? Perhaps just dreaming is enough to prevent dragging? Perhaps I have dragged and am on the rocks, just not woken up yet ?

So many questions .

[GMac]

We see it often where people are so only focused on the anchor and forget about the rest. The start of this thread is a perfect example. Sure having a good anchor is good, real good but it's far from the be all to end all.

A common occurrence we see is with one specific anchor that has published 'required chain leader lengths'. These are based of what they need in the country of the anchors birth and designer. The recommendations are very lightweight and short. There as most boating is in semi-sheltered waters and generally softish weather they work OK. But here where we anchor where the weather has a clean run of 1000's of miles the conditions area lot harder. These anchors when set-up to manufacturers specs seldom hold well. So we get many coming in saying 'this anchor is (insert anything bad here) so I want something else or bigger'. Very often we just add as little as 5mts of chain to the existing and all of a sudden the 'anchor' is working perfectly fine.

Often the anchor the boater has is more than adequate but the gear behind it isn't. Sadly I suspect much of the promo, some right and some wrong, put out by the anchor makers has people believing that if they buy a 'Wizzbang 4000 that won the ABC test' they are safe as houses. We see much advertising showing things like kids in bed in a storm being saved by a Wizzbang 4000 with zero reference or even the slightest hint of 'As good as a Wizzbang is it must be set-up correct to work well'.

Hard to blame the manufacturers to a point as they are only responding to to very competitive market forces but we still think they could put a bit more effort in to telling the punters 'it's not all the anchor'. Mind you some punters really do need to think harder as well.

Just like having a 1981 Toyota compact full of rust and bog. You can put as many $2000 each Pirelli race tyres on it as you like but it will still never ever be a Ferrari.

[tyrntlzrdking]

The original
Translated version of http://www.bluewater.de/b_anker.htm