Anchoring a Sailboat | Online Course

Everyone has their favorites. And so do we!

	Ultra: excellent penetration and holding in most bottoms; easy to stow.			Delta: sets well in many bottom types especially in hard mud/sand; useful for kedging and stern deployment.
	Rocna: excellent penetration and holding in most bottoms. Reliable storm anchor.			Fortress: light weight for holding power; can deploy from dinghy.

After more than 15,000 miles of cruising and anchoring under many trying conditions, we have settled on four anchors onboard. Our primaries have become the Ultra and the Rocna, both new generation scoop type anchors. We deploy them off the bow, with all chain rode on the primary and a chain/rope combination on the secondary, and we absolutely need a windlass to manage them. We have been extremely pleased with the performance of both and have rarely had occasion to reset. Both have been tested under conditions of more than 50 knots sustained wind and significant chop without incident. Both anchors dig deep as the wind increases, they veer well, and do not pull out with drastic changes in wind and tide.

Because of the size of our boat, and consequently our anchors, we also carry lighter weight anchors to deploy for special circumstances, like when we want to deploy a stern anchor or backup anchor. The aluminum Fortress is ideal for deploying via dinghy because of its light weight. The Delta is handy to keep on deck at the stern ready to deploy on a rope road when needed, as when the bottom is harder or composed of shellfish which a Fortress doesn’t like.

Avoid cheap imitations!

We mentioned before that not all anchors of one type are created equally. We lost our trusty Fortress, the original primary anchor on a previous boat, and resorted to using our backup fluke type anchor that was considerably larger than our Fortress but had no identifiable markings. Suddenly, we were having difficulty setting the anchor when we never had problems before. We spent a whole season wondering what had happened to our anchoring skills, until we bought a new Fortress. What a difference! Smaller, lighter, and sets and holds far better than the no brand one, despite appearing almost identical. We have to assume it was a less expensive generic version bought as a backup by the previous owners of our boat.

We have since heard many horror stories from people who bought cheap imitations that looked to them identical to the real thing. Flukes have bent and broken, shanks have sheared off, and some have failed to set and hold at all. Your boat and your well being is worth more than the couple of hundred you may save on a copy.

What we've left on the lawn

Fisherman CQR

The Fisherman and the CQR are our lawn ornaments now. We had ceased using them long ago and simply tired of lugging them around. Both were legacy pieces of very heavy gear that came with our boat when she was commissioned in 1976. We were convinced that the advances in anchor design were significant and our vessel was worthy of the upgrade. We tested many anchors before settling on the ones we carry today. And as a result, we are happy to say, that we have been happily hooking ever since. As we are fond of saying... "If you want a distinctive nautical look for your home, then a fisherman anchor is a must." "One of man's greatest inventions was the plough… And then some 'eejit' made an anchor out of it."

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