Choosing an Anchor
Introduction to Selecting an Anchor
The most important thing to know when anchoring is that there is no right anchor for every boater. The second most important thing to know is that the best anchor for you is most heavily reliant on what kind of bottom you will be anchoring.
Bottom simply refers to the ground at the bottom of the "sea" floor (or lake, river, etc.) that the anchor will be penetrating. The most common types of bottoms are mud, sand, rock, coral, and grass/sea weed. Nearly no area in the World has just one bottom so it's impossible to say "New York has rocky bottoms and the Puget Sound has sandy bottoms". The only way to know what kind of bottom you'll be anchoring in is to ask local boaters or to ask in an internet discussion forum (iboats.com has a very active discussion forum) or to pick up an anchoring and moorage guide book for your area of the World (every local Marine store should have these books available).
Most recreational boaters use one of three styles of anchors: a plow/CQR style, a claw/Bruce style, or danforth type anchor. Two other types of anchors you may see being offered are a grapnel and a navy style anchor. These anchors are essentially only suitable for very small and very large boats respectively. There also seems to be a surge in the number of new style of anchors being offered in recent years. The jury still seems to be out on many of these anchors and as such we won't cover them in this article.
Danforth, Plow, or Claw?
When I purchased my first boat it came with a Danforth anchor. As with many first time boaters, I didn't think twice about whether this was the right anchor or not and continued to use it for the next 3 years. Eight times out of ten, the anchor worked wonderfully in the waters of the Pacific North West. The other two times the anchor either set very poorly or I would be completely unable to set the anchor and would move to another anchorage spot. I blamed this poor anchoring on everything from the bay to my son manuevering the boat. In hinesight, these incidents were likely a result of the fact I was anchoring in bottoms the Danforth simply was not designed to hold in.
Danforth anchors are cheap, offer good holding power in relation to their weight, and work very well in sandy and muddy bottoms. In all other bottoms, the Danforth performs very poorly. If you are only a day boater or are 100% confident you will only be anchoring in sandy bottoms, the Danforth is a good and affordable choice.
If you will be doing any serious boating, you're wise to choose another anchor. The two obvious choices are a plow or claw style anchor. I have not designed this article around the fact these are the two styles of anchor we primarily offer on our website. Rather, we offer these two anchors because they are miles beyond other anchors in terms of reliability and quality.
On paper, a claw and a plow anchor perform very similarly despite their unique designs. They are both excellent all round anchors. In sand and mud they perform excellent, while in coral and rock there are really no two better choices. When customers call and I explain the different styles of anchors invarariably I get the same question:
Should I get a plow or a claw anchor?
I can never give a definite answer to this question. I have researched anchoring to death and have yet to find a clear answer. From my own personal experience along with others, it really seems to come down to taste. I've talked to many a boater who hail the claw anchor as a Godsend while others view it as blasphemy. Ditto for the plow.
My opinion is that these differences in opinion are likely mostly the result of psychology and little to do with rationality. At some point they may have tried anchoring with a plow anchor and for reasons out of the anchors control (likely the fact the anchor was poorly set out of the boater's error or the anchor was too small to begin with) the anchor dragged and they forever attributed this anchoring falure to they style of anchor. There is the possibility that an individual's inherent anchoring techniques favour one anchor over the other, but on paper both of these anchors should perform very similarly.
There are, however, two factors that do normally make me side with the Bruce anchor over the plow when customers are sitting on the fence. First, a claw anchor has slightly stronger holding power in terms of weight. Not a lot, but if you're without a windlass, the extra weight needed for a plow might get annoying. Second, a claw has more weight poised on its tip than the plow. In a study by Practical Boat Owner (page 80 n° 391 - July 1999) their research found that the claw had 38% of its weight on the tip while the plow had 18%. This means that the claw should set easier.
Truthfully, both of these anchors are so evenly matched that you'll do fine with either anchor and a lot of it will come down to personal preference. However, with the dawn of the internet and cheap foreign suppliers and the resulting enormous price drop in anchor prices boaters now have the luxury of being able to try more than one variety of anchor and see which one works best for them. Every serious boater should have at least one secondary anchor on board, so trying each may prove to be the best solution.
