Good bye CQR…hello Spade!

No not CCR…that’s a band. And no not David Spade. That’s an actor.

I’m talking anchors baby! You know,…those things that are around 70lbs that you drop down in the water and, along with a bit of chain (well really we have 300ft of chain), they magically keep your 36,000+lbs boat from moving all night!?!?! Crazy.

(Really there’s a whole formula to use, it’s not actually magic but it’s pretty cool that something so small can hold something so big)

The decision of what anchor to get had been the source of a huge debate in our house. Like anything to do with sailing…sailors have very strong opinions about anchors. Everyone swears by what they have and sometimes suggest / blatantly say you are really taking a risk, and are risking the life of your offspring by not following their advice.

Our house was divided down the centre. I wanted a Mantus. Greg wanted a Spade.

The Mantus anchor has this super sweet roll bar that helps it turn and hold in any conditions and really dig in. I’ve watched so many YouTube videos about this anchor and literally point out every Mantus I see on boats…there are 4 on our dock. It comes apart if you needed to do such a thing and is kind of on the new side of “anchor design technology” if such a thing could be said. Just straight up a bada$$ anchor. Oh, did I mention that dragging anchor is like a HUGE paranoia of mine? One of many, to be sure but still. On EXODUS we dragged once during the Air Show outside of Ontario Place in Toronto and it was hectic, noisy (with fighter jets zooming overhead) and stressful to sort it as the lee shore loomed. And that was during the day. Sleep is precious on a boat…bad sleep = bad decisions. I am a light sleeper most of the time (thanks Dad :P) and if I am worried about dragging I’ll be a zero sleeper. Greg sleeps like the dead. He only wakes up for 2 things. 1) when the kids were infants we had this breathing monitor thing (ok to be fair I think it was just for the 1st, after that we chilled out and by the time we had Grace we had a throw-away) and every now and then it would not detect the kid’s breath and and alarm would sound…Greg would LAUNCH out of the deepest sleep and be out the door before I had a foot on the ground…and 2) weird boat motions or sounds. So that’s comforting. Anyway… back to my obsession with Mantus anchors. Some very experienced sailors like those on SV Delos recently upgraded to a Mantus and they’ve been generally getting lots of radio-play. I was sold.

The Spade. Greg wanted a Spade. In Greg’s words it’s the “first of the new generation anchors”. Anchor designs in general have remained unchanged for years and years and years and years and years…there were the Bruce, the Plow and CQR (another type of Plow) and Danforth along with a few lesser known anchors that pre-dated WWII and then not much innovation until the Delta in the 80’s and then some cool stuff in the last several years. The Spade is a French anchor and has been grabbing mud since 1996. It features a demountable shank (as in it can come off) and a weighted tip for a good grab. It does not have the roll bar the Mantus has…which, after my obsessive YouTube watching I was fairly convinced was important. Don’t get me wrong, the Spade is a legit anchor. But it’s not the dreamy Mantus. Greg; however, was not convinced it was better and he was convinced it would not fit under our permanently mounted bow-sprit (a big metal pole that holds our asymmetrical sail out from the bow for an optimal shape).

Being the geeked-out, uber-planners that we are we made a cardboard template, then a foam template, then a double layer foam template (no joke) of the Mantus anchor to see if it would fit. I swear Greg put in the A+ effort on that template because he was so convinced he was right and he knew I wouldn’t accept it unless I saw it definitively with my own eyes…wee bit stubborn, I am :P So sometime last October we drove down to Maryland to do some boat work and we brought our template.

The Mantus wasn’t going to fit.

Heartbreak. But my roll-bar Mantus fantasy was over.

So we move on to the Spade (I really mean I catch up to Greg who was always there anyway). We get online and decided first, and most obviously, to get galvanized steel over stainless steel because we are not made of money (stainless is something like 2-3x the cost) and I really don't care if my anchor is shiny and pretty...I care if the damn thing holds. We met a lovely couple who have an HR 54 and they have a beautiful shiny stainless Spade and all I can say is we will hold as well as they will and ours was half the price. But truly theirs IS pretty. Next decision was less obvious to us and that was - what size? Spade Anchors website has a handing sizing chart that can start you considering your boat length (ours is just under 49) and weight (aforementioned 36,000lbs and that’s not fully loaded for a passage)…on their sizing chart that’s the weight of a 59-65ft boat. WTF. Ok so then we look up appropriately sized anchors for various sea states / weather conditions. We knew we wanted an anchor that could handle BIG winds (sleep, remember?) but not be so oversized that it was risky on the bow or, more likely, we’d have every damn sailor that sees us point out that our anchor is unnecessarily big (they really would do this). We used a variety of sizing charts that included storm conditions including a good Mantus one (**sigh**) to triangulate that for a Spade to handle “violent storm” conditions (take a deep breath Diane) with our boat length and weight we’d need a 77lb anchor.

Oddly enough the CQR that came with the boat was (in our opinion…we are sailors after all) way too small…despite clocking in at 75lbs. Totally different design. The CQR is a type of plough anchor and will dig in but then tends to break out back to the surface (like…you know…a plough). They aren’t super well known for consistent setting and can bounce along the bottom. No thanks! A Spade will dig deeper and stay there (like…you know…a spade).

Today we switched out the anchors which was another long, hot job that resulted in more jobs (see Greg’s rant about boat jobs here). New anchor fits…mostly.

Ironically we DIDN’T template the Spade. (10 points if you can you guess why!! It’s because Greg wasn’t trying to convince me of a Spade, he was trying to demonstrate why a Mantus wouldn’t work :P)

The angle of the shank is such that the anchor chain is raised on the deck which becomes a tripping hazard and introduces some bouncing we don’t want our teak to feel. Also because of its lovely weighted tip (to dig in) it wants to dig right into our bow. Nope. So we need to get a custom fitting to pin the shank down in the optimal position which will also hold the tip nicely away from the boat. Snug and secure.

So who knows when and where and how long that will take to get done but I’m sure, like every other boat job, we’ll sort it out in the next few weeks. Until then we have a nice little line (that will chaff through in 2.5 seconds in rough weather) holding the Spade in the position we want. Provided name application goes well (will post about that soon) we should be fine for an easy breezy shake down in a few days.

FIngers crossed.

So see you never CQR...welcome to the family Spade…I promise I will try and not compare you to the Mantus that still haunts my dreams…