In every generation there are lovers and haters of certain specific anchors. Some years ago, the majority of real cruising boats used the genuine forged CQR with great success. Then two companies, Australian, I think, came up with the Rocna and Manson. At first they competed against each other, but they soon realized they would do much better if they could dislodge the CQR from the top position. They did this with fabricated
marketing techniques. Now, I'm going to tell you something - there is no such thing as the PERFECT anchor. They thought the Danforth was one, the Bruce, and the CQR. But EVERY anchor can fail if it is either, improperly deployed, used in an area where it's best aspects cannot be exploited, little or no chain, too little
scope, and my favorite, just blatantly misused to provide a false failure during a bullcrap
anchoring test. The greatest victim of this type of designed failure test exposure has been the CQR. I see the same old false
marketing sound byte being repeated here. If I had the interest I would go find the old tests and expose all the foolishness. The Bruce anchor did not go out of business because it was a bad anchor i it went out of business because an enormous flood of
cheap counterfeits drove them out of business. The plowing your field crap can ONLY happen if you shorten the
scope on your plow so much the blade cannot dig in, or if you try to use it in some places in the
Bahamas where 1 to 2 feet of loose sand sits over hardpan. Almost anything will drag there, but a big Fortress or Danforth will hold as long as the wind doesn't pipe up over ten or so. I never had a problem with my CQR's, though I know you can't rely upon them to magically set without supervision. The best anchor I have ever used is the Spade, and this is the only one that has ever dragged on me. I'd sailed alone for way too long in nasty
weather and anchored while exhausted. Not enough scope. The tide came in and I dragged toward the beach. The anchor reset a hundred yards from shore and held throughout the night. When I awoke and saw what had happened, I realized how lucky I had been and wrote the whole truth in my online log. It's easy to say you were stupid and should not have become careless - it's much harder to fix a seriously damaged boat. Use your
head. Read and study everything you can, but don't, under any circumstances, swallow what a marketing blurb is selling, and learn to recognize those bytes in the recommendations of others. There are more than a few in this thread.