Photos of Anchors Setting

[noelex 77]

This was a boat a long way off and in closer to the beach. I did not see the boat anchor. It had a Spade and it was doing a great job.

You can see the fluke is totally buried with only a small portion of shank visible. There is more heaping up than is ideal (an anchor gets the best grip by diving deep where the substrate is typically firmer. Covering the fluke by scooping up the loose surface sand is less secure and suggests there is deeper firmer layer that is difficult to penetrate), but it is still a great and very secure result.

The anchor had a very long underwater float line. I think the Spade owner was anticipating his anchor would bury deeply on occasions .

These underwater floats are a good idea, but you need to careful they cannot reach close enough to the surface where they could get caught in a propellor. Other boats have no way of knowing where these lines are.

[Prairie Chicken]

Noelex, I'm envious of your camera & photos. Are you editing much in post?

Following are some of my first attempts with the SJCAM. Please bear with me. All were taken within the last month or so around Mallorca.

This was at Santa Ponsa, which has a mix of sand & weed. 6m with a scope of 4:1. Power used to set but I can't say how much except that the 22 kg Rocna hit the sand, then dragged back until it encountered the grass. I would have hoped for a set before encountering the grass but the evidence indicates otherwise.

1st Photo - I know there is an anchor at the end of that rode.
2nd - Ah, there it is.
3rd - Lastly, the drag mark.

[Prairie Chicken]

Cala Blava for a lunch stop. This spot is mostly sand, but as you can see, has some rock as well. This was definitely not a drop I'm proud of, but we didn't go anywhere, and had no problem with retrieval. 7 m, 3.5:1.

[kas_1611]

Originally Posted by Prairie Chicken

Cala Blava for a lunch stop. This spot is mostly sand, but as you can see, has some rock as well. This was definitely not a drop I'm proud of, but we didn't go anywhere, and had no problem with retrieval. 7 m, 3.5:1.

Definitely not going anywhere with that one PC. All that sand and you manage to find the rocks We've all done it so don't fret and thank you for sharing the pics.

Keiron

[JPA Cate]

Originally Posted by Prairie Chicken

Cala Blava for a lunch stop. This spot is mostly sand, but as you can see, has some rock as well. This was definitely not a drop I'm proud of, but we didn't go anywhere, and had no problem with retrieval. 7 m, 3.5:1.

PC, there are some places where anchoring like that means all the other boats but you will drag when the breeze gets up. Sometimes a bit of a bother to get detached from. Like kas wrote, we've all done it some time or another.

Thanks for the pics. It's really good to show people who don't know already how anchoring can really be, when it's not "perfect."

Ann

[noelex 77]

Originally Posted by Prairie Chicken

Noelex, I'm envious of your camera & photos. Are you editing much in post?

Thanks for the compliment and for the photos. My Mermaid takes a lot of the photos I post. We often dive together swapping over the camera after each dive and it is difficult to know who took a particular photo, so I don't give her credit she deserves. If it's a good image it is probably hers.

In terms of editing nearly all the underwater photos benefit from an increase in contrast, especially when the photos are in a smaller format on screen. If the anchor is close to the camera it only needs a slight boost, but any photos taken from near the surface look better and show more detail with a reasonable increase.

The contrast boost also seems to saturate the colours a little more. The camera usually does a great job of of getting the exposure and colour right, although we set the camera at -0.3 stop for all underwater photos which seems to work better with this model. For photos more than a few metres down you need a red filter that compensates for the loss of red light in the water. My camera has a digital red filter rather than a genuine physical one. I was I bit skeptical of this, but it seems to do a good job. Usually nothing is done with brightness or colour, but occasionally if the contrast is boosted a lot sometimes the shadows need to be lightened.

Because the underwater resolution is lower the best photos usually fill the frame. Usually there is at least one photo like this that needs no or at least very little cropping.

I have only used a very simple photo program on all the photos I posted on CF. The program is called Snapseed. The big advantage is this runs on the iPad which saves firing up the PC. I also think because the program has only limited capabilities (there are no image manipulation options like a healing brush, or a clone stamp for example) it removes any suggestion that the photos have been manipulated in a unrealistic way, because this is not possible with such a simple program.

Most of the photos would benefit from the more sophisticated controls of more comprehensive program like Photoshop. It would be nice to eliminate the white spots that sometimes appear in in the blue background for example, but by using only a simple program people can be reassured that the photos are an accurate representation, rather than something that has been altered.

Here are the the last two photos Spade direct from the camera before any manipulation. In retrospect I probably overdid the contrast when I Snapseeded the first photo in post #1531. If you compare these direct from the camera results to the posted photos it gives you some idea of the changes that I usually make.

[noelex 77]

The next anchor is a Delta. It was dropped in almost the same spot as the previous Spade. Comparing the two anchors give you a good idea of the practical difference between what in my opinion is a good anchor (the Delta) and an excellent anchor (the Spade).

It is often hard to justify the extra money when you see two different designs like this on dry land sitting on the chandlery shelf. This is especially true if your boat cannot fit a roll bar anchor. There is a big price difference between the Delta and the Spade and the difficulty regalvanising the Spade further increases its real cost.

I think if more people could see the results underwater they would understand that there are significant performance gains with the better anchors. There are obvious differences on every single drop. Even if on most occasions both anchors do their job satisfactorily and keep the boat stationary, the ability to bury much quicker and deeper means that the excellent anchors have more reserve to cope with adverse conditions.

I would caution I did not see either of these two boats drop anchor (while they are in the same anchorage, they were a long way from us). While the anchors were close to each other with very similar scopes, there is no guarantee that the substrate and setting conditions were identical. We do need to be cautious about reading too much into a single result.

However, I have seen many performances from both these anchors and this is a very typical difference. You can go through the other photos on this thread and make up your own mind. In my experience in this sort of substrate the Delta can be pulled harder on a longer scope etc and will still not dig in as well as the Spade already has (note: in softer substrates the Delta will bury much deeper than here).

[Prairie Chicken]

Tx for the comments Noelex. Yes, I'd already figured out you need to boost the contrast quite a lot. In PS Elements I can adjust for the absence of a red filter & correct the greens & blues. I'm just getting started with the SJCAM, but the idea of kinda-pointing-a-tiny-camera in the general direction of what you want to photograph is still foreign to me. I did consider buying a descent u/w camera, but still can't get past the idea of taking it into sea water, especially when the most interesting thing in the sea is an anchor. So the SJCAM (a Go Pro take-off) for <$100 CAD seemed worth a try. I'm also going to have to work on the free diving.

In the meantime, I enjoy seeing, and learning, how various anchors function in the real world. Carry on with the good work.

[kas_1611]

Not photos of anchors set underwater I know but thought I'd add a couple of the more oddball anchors hanging off bows here in the marina. I was playing with the settings on my camera after noelex's post earlier which is why I had it with my while swimming.



We've seen many of this kind, mostly going backwards, but I guess they might be good in rockier bays



And this kind I've seen a couple of times just lying on the sand. This particular example might just qualify for the "smallest anchor on a 46ft boat" award as it looks tiny.

During my swim this afternoon I spotted what look like a couple of Bugels, several Bruces, a couple of CQRs, a handful of Deltas, 1 Spade, 1 Vulcan (mine) and I think a Kobra alongside the 2 examples above. Apart from the Spade and my Vulcan most anchors look as per size charts but it's not a scientific study so can't read anything into it.

Time for cold beer

Keiron

[sanibel sailor]

Originally Posted by kas_1611

Is that a handhold at the end or just a lightening feature.

[kas_1611]

It certainly looks like a handle and I guess there would be nothing stopping you using them as such. The square protrusion in the middle is the end of the stock from what I can tell.

Keiron

[noelex 77]

Originally Posted by kas_1611

I'd add a couple of the more oddball anchors hanging off bows here in the marina.

The first anchor is a Jambo anchor:
The Jambo-Anchor »

Quite an intriguing design. A sort of Danforth with pointy tips. It gets my vote as the second sexiest anchor after the Ultra




The second one is an FOB HP anchor. A Britany variant:
FOB Anchors - Calibra Marine Equipment Ltd

FOB are little known outside France, but they produce some well made anchors in a range of designs.
The FOB rock is one of the convex plow anchors. The FOB light is quite different. It is an aluminium/titanium anchor that looks like it would be a good candidate for a stern anchor. It dismantles very easily. In some ways it is like a Danforth/Britany design. The smaller stock compared to a Danforth makes it easy to store.

[noelex 77]

This is another Spade. It once again was dropped in a similar spot to the last Spade.

You can see that it has set in a very similar manner, as you would expect. This one has a slight list so you can see the underside of fluke on one side. Other than that, it very much the same. The heaping up is maybe just a fraction less although it is still significant, but another very good result.

[hoppy]

Originally Posted by noelex 77

The first anchor is a Jambo anchor:
The Jambo-Anchor »

Quite an intriguing design. A sort of Danforth with pointy tips. It gets my vote as the second sexiest anchor after the Ultra




The second one is an FOB HP anchor. A Britany variant:
FOB Anchors - Calibra Marine Equipment Ltd

FOB are little known outside France, but they produce some well made anchors in a range of designs.
The FOB rock is one of the convex plow anchors. The FOB light is quite different. It is an aluminium/titanium anchor that looks like it would be a good candidate for a stern anchor. It dismantles very easily. In some ways it is like a Danforth/Britany design. The smaller stock compared to a Danforth makes it easy to store.

That looks like the kind of anchor Thor would choose

[Sailor g]

It's for the boat where nothing is single use. That anchor doubles as an axe