New Generation Anchor

[Bill]

Ebb writes: This is the Manson Supreme 25# $170. Let's call it my winner of the anchor fracas. The fluke is indeed straight but it is curved. The fluke is NOT bent from its tip to its heel. My reasoning tells me that this blade will dig in and keep digging in under pressure from the rode and not round out as spoon shaped anchors seem to want to do. Since it is not cupped I would think that mud would fall off more easily when retrieved. The hoop is held on with extra tabs welded to the blade. The tip is quite sharp and is reinforced. The device always rights itself to this position (except one, see below).

[Bill]

Ebb continues: Here is the Supreme in its only compromising position. Note the tip reinforcement under the fluke extending under the shank base. Note also the same at the hoop end. The hoop pipe is open and looks galvanized inside. This anchor looks like it'll do its job in more bottoms than any other. The only question is whether the anchor works well in smaller sizes and weights.

[ebb]

Adam's pic, was it the bent danforth or the headless raven that was the cause....?

It sometimes comes up often as not that it is a 'bruce style' or a 'danforth style' anchor.

The style of anchor is, of course, no guarantee of its trustworthyness. That danforth style anchor in the photo bears no resemblance to the USNavy Danforth* anchor in my possession. It has a forged shank that tapers from 3/4" at the shackle to 1 1/4" at the base where the flukes swivel. The hinge area looks like it's been hot riveted together. The flukes are 1/4" with a wide tapering flanges on the inner edges. It's stamped with a contract number and the date 1944. There not a hint of rust anywhere in the galvanizing. Probably pretty close to the real thing.

The Danforth anchor I have would probably turn under load in mud or sand if the wind shifted without bending its shank. The thing looks like it can do a job of work.
What would convince anybody to put their lives and their boat at the end of a cheap flimsy anchor? 338 came with a skinny "Hi-Tensil" Danforth (repeated on the faded label 10 times) The galvanizing is turning crusty white. The contrast between that one and the WWII one is instructional. It shows how easy it is we can be led astray by a comforting buzz word. One of my two Danforth anchors is an IMPOSTER. If I looked close would I find the word 'oblivion' stamped in its shank?

There seems to be a lot of folderol and flimflam in the anchor business. If it were possible I believe there should be a set of tests and standards an anchor should pass befor marketing. Maybe an anchor should be graded one two and three, based on strength and holding power. It would mean that it would be tested befor marketing. It's probably unfair to the little guy, but there's money and lives on the hook.

The Manson Supreme is a cool anchor - 25# distributed between a wide SHARP pointed blade - a roll-over bar that does what it's supposed to and adds to the anchor's handling ease - and a 12mm (7/16") shank that uses its weight there to help tip the anchor onto its weighted tip. Pretty clever design. Would guess that the anchor would turn while buried without harm to the shank. Haven't dragged it behind a SUV yet.

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*The Danforth Anchor was invented by Bill Danforth in Berkeley CA (according to "pyacht".) Obviously sometime befor 1943 and was sold to the military and a seaplane company. TieDownEngineering bought the pattern from Rule in 2000 and now makes them. The older anchor I have evidently is a surplus Navy modified (very beefy) version by an H.P.Shipley. If the anchor mentioned above that came with 338 is an original pattern Bill Danforth, then it was definitely time to move on to a 'new generation anchor'.

[ebb]

Entered the above post twice. Sorry...
Went to the Manson Supreme site to kind of check out my observations. I agree pretty much minus the hype. And also minus actual use. Need a bunch of observations by users, mostly in our boat-size range.
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The advertising copy writer for the Supreme, while he or she credits the French Spade with starting the 'new generation' anchor evolution, does not understand that the Manson anchor is not a spoon. If I dipped my new anchor in a pan and tried to lift water out with the blade it would not work. Will not hold water. The M.S. is not a spoon anchor like 95% of the others and that is a huge difference imco in its deployment. And imco is the reason why it will work better and more intelligently than any spoon or cup shaped anchor will.
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[Went back to the Mocna (so spelt at another anchor forum probably to avoid kiwi vender popups - we'll see...) site to see if anything had changed in the video. Nope.
Apropos the obvious imitation danforth in the Adam pic above, the claw and plow anchors used in the SUV pull test are both (admitted in the video text)imitations of the style. The claw was not a Bruce and the plow not a CQR. Would the real ones have performed differently? Uh-huh. Well, so WHAT is authentic testing? Let's use authentic anchors for starters.
Wonder if the 1944 danforth style anchor (it doesn't say Danforth on it anywhere) I have is close to what Mr Danforth invented?
I would (briefly) like to have a Mocna to compare with the Supreme. In images the Mocna fluke looks proportionally longer, ie narrower. It really is more of a spade shape than a spoon, or maybe a pan shape in that it will hold material in its concave top. The hoop attachment looks identical to me to the Manson. I might have ordered a Mocna earlier on in this exercise if it wasn't for that strange video.)

[c_amos]

The correct contact info for Azure Marine,
that Ebb bought his Madison Supreme from;

[size=4]Toll-Free Number 1-888-586-4732[/size]

[size=2]Southeast Florida
954-962-4515[/size]

(the phone number was not right in the post earlier in this thread.)

OBTW;

Manson 25 pound Supreme anchor (galvanized)
$173.001$173.00Sub Total:$173.00 Handling:$5.00 UPS Ground:$21.42 Grand Total:$199.42 http://www.azuremarine.com/store/det...ct_id=MAN:S25G

[ebb]

Craig, Thanks.
Went out to look at the Supreme again. It's a $200 anchor alright.
Noticed there's no eye for the anchor bouy in back of the fluke.
But find a carbinger to tie a bouy line to
that would slide on the hoop.

The hoop is further behind and higher than the end of rock shackle channel
and pulling there on the trip line may do a better job tipping the anchor out of trouble anyway.

Don't know about sliding any shackle down the groove...
is it impolite to ask if anybody has done it, like blind from up on deck?
Seems like the unavoidable upward pull from the boat would slide the shackle right back up the shank.

Check out google:
Wilson, the Story of an Anchor Buoy
the blueline address is too long.

[c_amos]

Ebb,


I put in a plug for you with the Azure marine folks, I wnet with the Supreme after followng this thread.... (I sold my CQR, rather then get it re-galvinized)

Here is the link to; [size=4]Wilson: The Story of an Anchor Buoy[/size]

[ebb]

Craig, You SOLD the CQR BEFOR you got the Supreme?
Yoicks old chap, that's confidence! Upon receiving it,
I hope you post your impressions here or on another thread.

And I sure hope you take the plunge with it
and record every nuance. How it sets, how it does in hard stuff.
How it holds in mud. I'm dying to find out if it's
another straw in the wind. Or something real.

Believe guys have more problems with intuition than the gals.
I've learnt not to trust my socalled feelings. Trusting logic is equally
dangerous because it's too hard to cut the human factor out.
If you are going to talk with your tiller and talk to your sails
you are going to have a special relationship with your anchor.
Some folks even have a thing with their anchor buoy! Viz "Wilson".

I hope our Supreme has some endearing (enduring?) qualities.
I do respond to the blue denim working anchor look of
old fashion galvanized steel.

Above all I hope we have a relationship based on unbending trust!

[CORNAN]

One of my customers clued me to this thread and I appreciate the mention of Azure Marine. We're still a small company with low overhead, but even our prices will have to inch upwards a bit soon.

On the Manson stainless steel Supreme: This anchor is the only SS anchor we get that isn't polished - the reason is that the stainless Supreme is made with a 2205 (high tensile stainless steel) shank instead of a 316L shank. 2205 is twice the price of 316L.

We're still trying to get the SS product at a better cost in any event, but right now it's relatively pricey as compared to the galvanized model.

[commanderpete]

The October '06 issue of Sail Magazine has an article where they tested 14 brands of anchors on hard sandy bottoms.

The Rocna seemed to come out on top, followed closely by the Manson.

Surprising to see that the Fortress and Hydrobubble did very well too.

I'm sure the methodology employed in the testing could be questioned.

Anchors tested:

CQR-35lb Delta-35lb Manson Supreme-35lb Rocna-32-lb Spade-35lb Wasi-35lb WM Danforth Style-26lb XYZ-12.5lb Sarca-33lb Oceane-38-lb Hydrobubble-16lb Fortress FX37-22lb Bulwagga-28lb

Quote: "Like the Manson, the Rocna, with its sharp point and roll bar, was one of the better-performing designs we tested."

Quote: "In the end, we were surprised that the CQR, CLaw, XYZ, and Performance 20 performed poorly in our test and were impressed with the results of the new sharp-point/roll-bar designs, along with the Hydrobubble and Fortress."

[ebb]

THIS SHOULD BE A CONTINUATION OF THE "NEW GENERATION ANCHOR" thread.


Manson Supreme seems to have caught on. A lot of cruisers on the net talk about them and carry them. Some say the MS has become their primary anchor.
That Mocna bested them in the last big WM/Sail/YachtingMonthly mag test might be due to the luck of the roll.
OR, as I surmised and wrote to Manson about it might be due to the rollbar gussets that secure the rollbar to the blade on the bottom acting like a brake.

Both anchor makers twaddle about how these gussets help tilt the anchor into the bottom but there isn't a shred of actual evidence that this is the case.
I think that in hard sand the gussets and the rollbar ends may prevent the blade from taking a deep set. A computer model might be designed to explore this.
I think the Manson Supreme would benefit in deep setting if it had a smooth bottom (aside from the welded reinforcement of the spearpoint) - so that once set it would keep cutting cleanly into the bottom.
If Manson upset the gussets and put them on top then Mocna couldn't compare themselves to the better anchor as they constantly do.


[Practical Sailor reported on heavyweight Manson/Mocna galvanized anchor testing on a Chilean beach in their November08 issue. There were two Mansons: one the Supreme and the other a Ray which is a welded copy of the original cast Bruce, no longer made. In this report the stainless steel Ray with its three points catches the slope better to penetrate the stoney covered hard sand beach. But that is what it is. The anchors are pulled by winch from a boat. Something wrong here. Reminds me of the first PS sandy beach tests that pulled anchors with an SUV from a parking lot.*

IT IS PLAIN TO SEE that the strangely unimportant little gusset feet on both the Mocna and Supreme had no effect on getting them to START a set on the DOWN SLOPE when hauled by the boat winch. The close-up photos from behind show how similar the back ends of the two anchors are. Couple of robot turtles.
What this test is supposed to decide is beyond comprehension. The Ray was more prone to dig in while being dragged because it would flop over and penetrate one of its three points. Actually it IS the star of the 'test' because of this point - but mostly because it was shinier and more bling.
The beach test proves NOTHING relative to a 35' and under cruiser anchoring in 35' of water.
Practical Sailor should be banned from "testing anchors."]

In water with scope out, it's pretty obvious that a 125# Manson Supreme will set quicker than a 25#.

I feel we small boats have different issues. We can't depend on anchor weight to gain a decent set. We don't usually anchor on dry stoney beaches.
We have to ask more versatility of a new-age anchor because we cannot carry a whole range of anchors to match all bottoms.

I hope somebody is keeping score on what bottoms the Manson Supreme has difficulty with.

Some cruisers are upset by the long shackle slider of the MS and think it weakens the shank. Never proven, never an issue. Even in coral (shouldn't be anchoring here) where an anchor can get lodged it seems stupid to rig a shackle to the slider. The anchor does need a hole for a shackle in the center of the rear of the blade OR a loop low down on the back of the shank for a traditional trip line. Should have either one to be right. The slide is at best whimsical, can't imagine a cruiser ever using it, and there are no videos that show it actually working. It may turn out that he MS could be improved with its cylinder section blade cut with a curve to its rear for a little more surface area.

The MS will be Little Gull's main anchor as we learn more about it.


At this moment (01/09) Azure Marine sells the 25# galv MS for $248 (S&H xtra)
WestMarine sells the Mocna 25# for "Only $799" **
[WM - galv MS 25# "Only $299.99"]. Under $300!
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** not once in advertising these anchors does WM mention that these anchors are galvanised. They say only 'steel'. Not stainless steel - which a 25# anchor for $799 certainly ought to be.

[commanderpete]

Does the Manson Supreme fit through the cockpit locker hatch?

Here is another anchor that's starting to get some buzz---the Raya from Brazil

http://www.ancoralatina.com/acolhime...me%20page.html

[Commander 147]

I have found this anchor (it is called a Hydro-Bubble) works significantly better than any other anchor I have ever used. It has been for some time my primary anchor. Unfortunately the company went out of business about a year ago. I spoke to the owner and the anchors were made here in the USA and he could not compete with similar style anchors on price. At the time stainless prices were going through the roof. The white bubble on top is a float that makes the anchor land in the correct orientation every time. After 3 years of using this anchor I have only once had it not set the first time. If you see one for sale used it is worth a try IMHO.

[c_amos]

Does the Manson Supreme fit through the cockpit locker hatch?

Yup.

I kept mine there for several months before I had completed my bow roller installation.