Hi all. Just back from a few weeks away and it was glorious if not a bit hot at times. My
anchor worked sweet, Thanks for asking
ALL anchors can bend and anyone who says theirs won't is deluding themselves or has one the size that could be called a 'mooring weight'.
I have seen bent anchors of ALL designs and that includes
Rocna and Spade. If getting picky I haven't seen a 'bent' Bruce knock-offs but have seen way too many just 'snapped' or shattered.
The one in the photos looks to have been hooked into something and been given to much curry (I'd say it had to be a hell of a lot actually and are wondering what the rest of the system is now like) in the retrieval. If it was on a
charter boat that doesn't surprise me in the slightest.
Charter boats are like company cars, they can do anything anytime with out worry for the simple reason that the owner is not the user. We replace
gear on charter
boats far more often than a privately
used boat.
What happened to that
anchor in question we don't really know so it is a bit hard to make a judgement I'd say. I will say we have given Supremes loads far in excess of what 99.9% of them would ever see in their lifetime on boats and none of them gave us any reason to see any structural weakness of any sort. We regard the Supreme as the strongest of all the new gen anchors and by a nice margin.
For all the pontificating by some about the laminated foot, again we have yet to see any evidence this is an issue. Yes, I have seen the photos on another site but as that site does have serious issues with the Supreme I don't regard them as anything worth considering. Supremes are made in NZ.
Rocnas are made in
China now. This is only a recent change i.e the last few months. I don't know if the ones out of Suncoast
Marine are but I'd think it would seem strange to make some there and some elsewhere. Anchors is a volume
game so why split manufacturing would be my thought. Maybe Suncoasts are still made there but I doubt for much longer, it just seems to defy economic logic to do so.
You'll also notice that they now have a cast foot rather than a press braked plate
steel. The
Rocna website and info has yet to be updated about all of this. I do have issues about the covert way the implication is that they are NZ made but that's just
marketing I suppose. By the way that is not a Rocna only thing and applies to more than one anchor outfit.
Whether the change in location of manufacture will have any baring on strength/ quality/ performance or whatever remains to be seen. I see they are using an alloy rich (as opposed to zinc rich) galvanising which seems to be going against the trend by the Western world (Gezz.. I hate that phrase) but it does make them look flash on the shelf.
Re the galvanising on that Supreme - The shanks are made of a lot higher grade
steel than the foot and as the higher the grade the harder it is to galvanise. That explains the difference in the look both when new and after some use. As a matter of interest the pre-china versions of the Rocna use the same stuff (I just don't know what is used now or even if it is different but I think it is) and if you take a look at those you'll see the shanks appear to be different from the foot. This is just the higher against the lower grade steels. Nothing to be concerned about and just a 'nature of the beast' sort of thing.
This high grade steel being hard to galvanise issue is the reason I'm not a fan of using anchor chains in grades above G40 or sometimes called 'HT' (high test) by the US viewers.
Also certain seabeds can do strange things. Locally we have a few spots that if you anchor in a lot all your chain and anchors appears to go rusty almost overnite. It isn't but something in the seabed certianly makes it look that way. Anchor in
coral for a couple of months and that will rip most of the galvanising clean off. Again, nothing to be concerned about from a manufacturing angle.
One bent anchor an issue does NOT make so if you have a Supreme I'd say you made a great choice and carry on as usual.
Maine Sail - I wouldn't have liked to have been your undies when you took that video. A surprisingly steady hand on the
camera I though, nice
work and damn pleased you were around to post it afterwards