I live aboard in Med and sleep with 40kg rocna and min 7:1 with chain of 10mm ....in many years never fail. Rocna (like many other ancors) need’s minimun 5 :1. Testing at 3,5:1 is ridiculous...

Hey Steve after looking through and binge watching your videos. I keep seeing the same things when an anchor reset drags; mud from the square shank piled up compacted to the anchor. Maybe rounding the shank to allow mud to come off, or how about painting or polishing the anchor to be smoother and to stop the mechanic bonding of mud to the surface. The galvanized coating is really rough with lots of small surface imperfections that allow a lot of surface area for mud to stick to. Think a coat of polish and wax to a cars paint to bead off dirt and grime.

Steve, I love your tenacious efforts.

Excellent work! So valuable to the sailing community!

Wow, your testing is the best! You have really put a lot of thought and effort into this. After viewing your tests, I bought a Spade Have been very happy with it. It deploys and retrieves with NO hang ups and has never drug. Before, used a Delta. Went to 55 # on my 44’ boat. 3/8 BBB chain. Had very good luck with it. But spade much better. Delta was best bang for the buck back then, but maybe Rocna good bargain buy now. Spade is pricy but well worth it. It’s like have a very nice car with poor tires. Just doesn’t make sense. Again. Great work!!

Archimedes would be proud of your dedication to levers. Rocna clearly build strong shanks - even if they're not straight!

Thank you for your videos. You have helped me choose my new anchor. Keep up the great work!

I was waiting for a Wile E. Coyote moment when you were trying to straighten out the bent shank, lol! Love your vids - keep up the good work!

I am not a sailor. I am not a boater. I'm just a retired molecular biologist. And I LOVE your videos! the scientific method rules! Thank you for your wonderful videos!

I have the 45 lb. Ronca.....thanks for all ur hard work.

Steve, as per the last two videos, you know by now that I, as you, have a 45 lbs Mason Supreme anchor. I drilled holes into it, as you did, after seeing your testing results. I drilled the same number of holes, i.e. 9, on both sides of the shank, as per what you did, in my own Manson anchor, with the exception that follows. I added two holes in a line at the base of the shank close to the tip, i.e one more than what you did to this Rocna. When I now retrieve my Mason, all the mud is gone!!! Let me know if you want a picture. With regards to weakening the anchor because of the holes, I’m going to reassure you here. My neighbour is a structural engineer. He said technically it did weaken the anchor, but not within the context of its usage i.e. because of the way the anchor is pulled in the seabed. Said otherwise, we marginally weakened our Mason Supreme by drilling the holes into the fluke of the anchor as we did. More importantly, we improved its performance by doing so. Now, I still have to sharpened the tip of my Manson, as you did, because, as I stated in your previous video, the Manson Supreme is completely inefficient in a hard-packed sand bottom, i.e. a prevalent seabed up here in upstate NY.

Your videos are fantastic!

Yo Steve! Work has been really quiet here in Melbourne. Looks like I’m eating some contracts in next week. Will def chuck you some cash when they come through. as i have watching for years and made my decision to get a sarca excel primarily from your videos. This was 2 years ago before its recent outstanding performances. + plus its locally designed and made. Fantastic unbiased research here by the way! I’m sure Rocna would like to see it.

Steve. You make good points about modifying an anchor. If the boat drags and wrecks the insurance company might have something to say about a modified anchor.

It is funny that the Rocna gets such bad marks here. I'm new to sailing and have had my Fortress anchor drag a bit (scary at night). All my vid watching and mag reading, everyone spoke so highly of their Rocna. Many saying, I've never had a problem. So I went I to the marine store for an anchor; they basically had Fortress and Rocna. I went home with their #10 (23 lb) anchor for a 24', 5,000 lb sloop. I was out this summer on a night with 35 kt winds in a mud bottom with 10' of chain somewhere Downeast. I went out at midnight to check (and decided to let a little more rode out). The tension on my rode line was unbelievable. I actually got sleep that night (with my anchor drag alarm) thinking "now worries" I have a Rocna. I later saw your test vids. Hmmm. Won't sleep as soundly next time.

Give me a lever long enough and I will move the world - but not the rocna shank!! - Archimedes 😂🤣 great video!

Thanks for this!!! Patterns of what works and what does not are becoming more apparent. Based on your theory of the mud build up, another potential mod would be to sharpen (or build up a sharper point) the leading edge of the shank and then polishing this area so that the mud does not have a 1/2" flat and sand paper to grab on to. Since the mud gummed up the front holes I wonder if putting an angle to them so that as the anchor became more horizontal the holes would tend to open up more on the bottom would also help. I also +1 the idea of bending the back down instead of up such that it makes the anchor set more deeply with pressure there.

An interesting tale. I was watching Sailing Atticus recently in a real blow in Bermuda and their anchor dragged and dragged and basically wouldn't reset. They had a ton of scope out. Pretty sure they had a roll bar anchor. Mantus!

Very interesting Steve, think my Rocna will get the flattened flukes with total of 3 holes at front. I travel in sand here in Florida so expect better performance from a mod like this. Love your channel and also love this kind of real world experimentation.

Re your comments on the Northill anchor. For years they dominated the commercial fishing fleet here in BC I suspect mainly because they could be welded up in the backyard out of mild steel plate and because they do work given the major limitation that you note. The other limitation in my view is they tear the bejesus out of your topsides when recovering them.

i have a 20KG Rocna works well, ill check the square just for fun, mine is 3 years old. my steel 40" sailboat is 26000 Lbs we use all 5-1/6" chain 300' available usually 5-1 scope more if necessary. thanks for all your research.

Looks like you helped it some. I ll stay with my old Spade!

Bought a 25 kilo Rocna. Would love to see the modification of sharpening the front edge of the shank near the blade. (Like that is on my original 16k Delta design) And also the removal of the rollbar. Note that that would also benefit the weight distribution. Great work !

With all your knowledge gained I’d say you need to come up with a best of the best designs and incorporate into a “Panope Anchor” that thing should be bomb proof...I’m sure if you announced that, anchor manufacturers would take a deep breath. That would make a nice winter project while the boat is out of the water 👍 good job sir

Hi Steve love the testing you are doing ,I've just got a copy rocna and on your dynamic reset and the cobbles I wondered if you have noticed that in the upright position these anchors have no angle of attack unless the chain can depress the shank or cause a fall over? Could this be relevant. Steve

Thanks!

We had a 15KG Rocna and wanted to upgrade for full time live aboard . The different between the 15 and 20KG in size is not much but between the 20 and 25 the difference is more substantial. Between the weight difference the surface area os much greater. The Mantus dont seem to have that big jump between sizes

Possible that the shank was slighty distorted when it was welded by the asymmetric heat application instead of initial alignment. I'm a retired nav.arch. and have seen massive distortions in steel on ships due to welding.

The mud is probably building up from the squared off shank, it seems like rounding off the front of the shank would help shed seaweed and mud.

I've read that it is the seabed that hold you in place and the anchor's job is to not disrupt the seabed.

Very interesting video. Is this an "abnormally performing" Rockna or have others you have tested fared better? I like your reasoning at the end. I think one lesson I take away is that a 4:1 scope is sometimes insufficient for these rollbar anchors, which goes against the current thinking that they actually need less. We run a 45lb Mantus on our 35' Hallberg-Rassy Rasmus and anchor out full time. Rarely will we stay in any one spot for more than a few days since we do the US East Coast migration every season. It is usually someplace new in an area we have never anchored in before. All we have to go on is the chart's description of the sea bed and thr reviews of others on Active Captain and other sites of these anchorages. We have only drug a couple of times in the past three years and those were both VERY slow drags and both times at true scopes of 4:1 or worse. Both were in very soft mud with deep burials/penetration and the mud caking into the 10-15 feet of the chain near the anchor. I believe you are right about the issue of the chain coming down through the mud to the deeply-buried anchor in a concave curve. The chain can't cut through the mud like a knife and has a lot of drag itself, especially when caked with mud. A wire rope leader off of the anchor might do better in these situations, as would using more scope. To make matters worse for the scope equation when the anchor buries deep like this it is actually serving to shorten the scope and the angle of the rode even more. In shallow water situations with extremely soft mud the anchor burial depth may come close to the actual water depth, effectively doubling true depth and halving the scope ratio. In 10 feet of water with 40' of rode under the surface you will have 4:1 but if the anchor plunges 10 feet deeper into the mud the scope is now 20 feet below the boat and at 2:1 -plus the curving chain issue further tends to lift the shank upward as well. Oooops! The times we drug in soft mud I did notice that we seemed to be too close to where we dropped the anchor beforehand using the GPS. I believe this was because the anchor went in so deep that more of the rode was being used coming up to the boat and therefore the boat wasn't as far away horizontally as the projected rode angle would predict. When the anchor did drag it would lunge slowly and then reset. When I noticed this on the anchor alarm app on my phone the boat would move a few feet and then stop, then wait a number of minutes before doing it again. The winds were pretty steady and not gusting too badly. I think the anchor was slowly turning upwards, then surfacing to near the top of the mud. Near the surface the chain angle was better and the anchor would dive again and reset to a point where the chain angle was again too steep and do it all over again. We were moving about 30' per hour and I let this go on for about 3 hours (100') before it became light outside and my wife woke up. We had plenty of room to drag on another 300 feet, but I figured we were staying the day and another night to wait out the weather so we should figure out what was going on right away. There were no other boats around us except for a couple of dericlicts a few hundred yards off to the side. We retrieved the anchor and it was buried very deep, about 10 feet down but it did come up slowly with constant pressure once the chain was vertical. I was surprised that an anchor buried that deeply was dragging. There was nothing at all fouling the anchor like weeds, sticks, netting or clothing/bedding*. We returned to the initial spot and reset the anchor, this time allowing for this extra 10 feet of burial depth in the scope equation. It held fine after that and never budged so much as a could be determined by the GPS accuracy. These days we put out at least 7:1 if we can get away with it and even 10:1 if there is room. An extra few seconds of the electric windlass is all it costs to be sure there is plenty of scope. We rarely anchor in water over 14-16 feet deep, so we are not talking about a whole lot of extra room needed. *We once picked up a heavy down parka jacket when anchoring. The anchor took an uncharactoristically long (50 feet). distance to set, skittering along before finally digging in. There was a bad storm coming, the remnants of Hurricane Eta and we later saw max gusts in the 50's that evening in N. Carolina. I am glad we didn't just leave it because when we pulled up the anchor to check it was piercing the thick parka. The Mantus has an extremely sharp point compared to the Rockna but I was impressed that it was able to rip right through all the layers of the heavy nylon jacket and insulation to make a huge hole so that the tip of the anchor could dig in and set. It hadn't ripped all the way through so the entire fluke and rollbar could fit through, so before I could hook it well with the boat hook it fell off the anchor back into the water. It was SO HEAVY and waterlogged I was having trouble just pulling it off. We didn't budge that storm but nearly all the other cruisers sharing this anchorage did have issues and we watched them struggle out in 50+ gusts and driving rain trying to put out more scope and in one case extra anchors. No thanks. I am grateful the dragging boats were not upwind of us, and they were all able to eventually stabilize their situations. Their problems did not become our problem too.

Sv Panope would you consider testing the recently released MKII. Be interesting to see if their changes address the resting issue.

The turned up rear flange as originally designed seems to be acting as aeroplane’s elevator, and as the anchor ploughs into the mud it forces the rear of the anchor down and the fluke upward.

Have you ever considered painting the flukes with an epoxy/graphite mix instead of (or additionally to) the holes? It creates a slightly slippery surface and is plenty strong. Would be interesting to see if it helps with the mud fouling. Thanks for doing these tests!

I would turn the lee flaps down to drive the blade deeper. Other modes would be to increase the pitch and decrease the shank length.

do you think that drilling holes is likely to upset the galvanising barrier?

Is it possible to modify a cheaper anchor like delta? Buying a rocna and modify it is no option. Then u can buy a Viking etc for nearly the same. But modifying a cheap standard anchor could be a option for people like me who anchor only 1 to 5 times over night per year

I do wonder if the rocna fluke ears extended out further, like a mantus, if this would improve the performance of this anchor. That is of course a welding job but might be an idea for next season when panope is relaunched. Just a, hopefully helpful, suggestion.

I'm not sure that the thinking that mud on the anchor upon retrieval is a factor on the anchor not holding. If there is force forcing the anchor down, would the mud stuck on the fluke hold the anchor back? I imagine a shovel, a shovel with mud on the fluke. If you were digging a hole with the shovel, pushing it down in the dirt with your foot, doesn't seem like the mud would make much difference.

What if the flattened fluke plates were bendable to begin with - like keep them flat for thick mud & weed and bend them upwards for cobblestone and soft sand?

I jave a hard time with this. Surely Rocna did engineering testing...this giy sledge hammers it and it goes from fail to success? Bro has Rocna called you yet?

Remove the rollbar and test what happens. I know its not authorised or backed by most tribes but do it ! Also sharpen the leading edge of the shank. Note my old original Delta mk1 and new Rocna 2 have this feature.

next time we get a tsunami im goin to your house ;)

Give a little heat and it would bend lighter

Maybe don’t drill the holes in a straight line. Maybe alternate? For strength. Bigger holes? Maybe turn the ailerons down, or make them longer?

You are missing the German Bugel anchor.

Hydraulic press to straighten anchor

Aye m8, I must say I doubt that the flattening of the back fluke of that Rocna could affect the performance in a bad way. To me it isn’t logical, since they are bended upwards in original design, and then becomes like a rudder, turning the whole fluke up(!) from the bottom. I reckon a test with them turned downwards would be very interesting.

Hi Steve, I'm a fan of your investigations. Have you come across a Knox anchor? www.knoxanchors.com/ I'm curious to see what you think about the gap between the flukes. Would this save all the drilling? Likewise a flat trailing edge without the Rocna 'spoiler' would save on the hammering? Knox are a Scottish company and I am contemplating buying local but wondered if you had an opinion. Keep up the great work!

For all of the Rocna fans that got offended by this video ask yourself why Rocna thought they needed to come out with a Mk2 version. Watch the video Rocna produced showing the changes they made vs the original. Why would they go through the expense of designing a new one if the original didn't have a problem?

That anchor is designed for the "normal" (i.e. recommended virtually everywhere) scope of 5:1 or better. The angle of the pull is taken into account when designing the angle of the shank versus the plow. It seems to me to be mildly disingenuous to do all the testing with such a short scope of 3:1, and I certainly would never encourage anyone to use that for an overnight. I would love to see a relative test of the same anchor at 3:1 and then at least 5:1 as I think there would be a tremendous difference.

Minimum scope should be 4:1

Not right. The rocna needs a lot of chain so the angle is downwards and digs in.

I stopped watching before half way. Absolute rubbish. Do you think for a minute that the manufacturer didn’t perform all these test prior to mass production ? As already stated you have just voided the insurance claim if something was to happen because of dragging. I have a 25 kg rocna and have been anchoring in sand all summer. Fully loaded Oceanis 41.1 with 14 passengers and 700 liters in 3 tanks. . Dropped and caught first time every time.

12:00...worlds worst neighbor! Also, I'm really concerned about my Rocna anchor now for my sailboat...and can't see myself modifying it like you did. hmmm, perhaps I should go back to my Bruce?

Killed a fish

Testing anchors in a way they were not intended to be used confuses me. Anchors are designed to set and then be loaded horizontally, not 3.5 to 1 scope measured from the bow to bottom at high tide. I have to wonder how they would perform when tested as designed? 5 to 1 or 7 to 1 is typical for that last 40 years. Lifting the shank of an anchor is how you unset it, not set it. Holes? Wierd logic.

You know what is bad is that my 40 lb CQR holds better when anchored in that exact same location.