T&T: Anchor Size Recommendations

[Milt Baker]

Rafael,

I do my best not to be judgmental of my fellow captains . . . but a
40-pound CQR on a 50-ton 58-foot trawler blows my mind.  C'mon!  OF 
COURSE you dragged in windy weather.

For comparison, my 58-ton (100,000 lb.) 51-foot trawler yacht carries
a 110-lb. Delta and 400 feet of 3/8-inch HT chain, and we sleep very
well at anchor.  I can recall dragging only once in hundreds of nights 
of anchoring over the past four years.  Before this boat, my 42-foot, 
37,000 lb. Grand Banks trawler carried a Delta 55-lb. anchor for a 
dozen years with pretty much the same results.

Maybe if I'd had a Rocna I'd never have dragged at all! ;-)

By my estimate, a 55-pound Rocna--no matter how good it is--is about
half the weight you need.  And after you get a big, hunkin' anchor, 
a good, reliable power windlass for dealing with the ground tackle needs 
to be next on your list.  Seriously. 

One guy's opinion.

--Milt Baker, Nordhavn 47 Bluewater, Hampton, VA

P.S.  I'd love to see Subic Bay again . . . when I was last there in 
the 1970s on a Navy ship, the U.S. Navy owned the place and the bar 
girls seemed to own the adjacent town of Olongapo.  Besides the 
delicious San Miguel, what I remember most is the beautiful sunsets 
over the mountains to the west--some of the prettiest I've ever seen!


Rafael wrote:

Our boat is 58' by 15', 50 tons gross, steel, full displacement. It  
dragged the CQR practically every other day of the charter. To be  
fair, a 40-lb CQR was probably undersized to begin with for our size  
of boat. But our first anchor was a 100-lb Navy, and it used to drag  
that too, sometimes.

Applying the "2 lb per ft of boat +10%" rule would give us a 130-lb  
anchor. What a nightmare it would be to try and retrieve that  
manually. In foul weather. Trying a 55-lb Rocna on our boat should be  
an interesting test of whether the design has really moved technology  
forward.