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Ship Shape ยป
In this section of the site, you'll find all sorts of information on what we've learned in our journey (We're still learning!). Are you still learning? You might want to check out our glossary of sailing terms.
Trying out a Spade anchor
One new Nelson friend, Adrian Faulkner fell in love with the Maggie B. He was, however, shocked about our main anchor which is a 80 pound CQR. He had gotten to know the French inventor of the Spade anchor, which is quite different in design. I said something like “well, everybody has their favorite anchor.” Or words to that effect. The next day he brought by a thick package on all sorts of careful tests by several different independent organizations, which proved that the traditional “plow” anchor was pathetic and the Spade was terrific. That caused me to recall that the Maggie B did drag in Barbados, the Seychelles and twice in Tasmania. All were in notoriously bad holding grounds. But then I thought of the anchoring challenges ahead of us in the Marquesas, the coast of Chile and Patagonia, and all of a sudden a “top rated” anchor seemed much more attractive. While the Spade anchors are excellent, their availability isn’t. It is run by Frenchmen.
Adrian is off to Southeast Asia for five months and has loaned us his anchor with the understanding that we either get it back to him by his return or get him a new one. I’m hoping that the overdue shipment will arrive in Auckland by the time we get there. Meanwhile we’ll try it out in Marlborough Sound and the Bay of Plenty.
The essential difference is that the “plow” anchors plow up the bottom. I have definitely seen it happen in Barbados. The Spade digs in. Also the plow anchors have a big proportion of their weight in the shank and not much in the tip, which needs to dig in. The Spade has 50% of its weight in the tip and supposedly digs in so hard and fast that new owners think that they have snagged an underwater cable. We’ll see.
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I can’t imagine that you would be disappointed with the Spade and look forward to an update.
—townjd January 21, 2008I’m a member of Canberra Ocean Racing Club, which owns the Bavaria 44 ‘Namadgi’. This is a very busy boat, cruising most of the Australian east coast each year and visiting New Caledonia and Vanuatu every second southern winter. She is on her way back to Sydney after competing in the Sydney-Hobart Yacht Race and cruising beautiful Tasmanian waters.
One of the smartest things we did was to throw away our unreliable plough anchor (a genuine CQR) and buy a Rocna, a New Zealand designed and made ’spade’ type. In the tests and other data we studied, the Rocna came out at least as good as the Spade. We opted for it as it was cheaper and speedy and certain delivery was assured.
It’s had a lot of use in the last year or so and has never let us down. It hardly touches the bottom when you can feel it bite. It digs straight in and is usually completely buried. It comes out easily with the chain up-and-down. Wonderfully reassuring. It fitted the anchor roller OK although because of the anchor’s roll bar, we had to move the original port and starboard bow lights which are now in a safer and more logical position.
Congratulations on a great website and best wishes for your cruising adventures.
David Townsend (Canberra, Australia)