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Old 08-11-2012, 01:02 PM   #81
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Perhaps I'm hop'in to smoke the thing so I can get a better one.
Well in that case it will last forever...........or until its 2 a.m. and a storm has brewed up on you and you desperately want to reposition!
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Old 08-12-2012, 11:09 AM   #82
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HaHa 71 We went to a small boat show yesterday and ran into those wonderful people that towed us to Comox w our engine out. Wish I could have been ther'e to help them w their anchor winch packed it in. They have all chain and a big anchor. They said they were glad they had the nice tow line that they towed us w but I'm not sure how the line helped them. Perhaps the winch had a capstan on the side that was still working and they had a chain hook.
My little capstan dosn't SOUND like it's going to last at all. It's VERY noisy. But it's hard to complain much about something that's working ... on ones boat.
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Old 08-13-2012, 01:27 PM   #83
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If you guys sharpen the tips of your Fortress anchors, you'll have better luck in grass.
So why don't they come from the factory sharp? I wonder if anyone has ever suggested this to them? I wonder if they tried it?
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Old 08-13-2012, 02:23 PM   #84
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Always have sharpened the tips on my danforths as well...made them OK...up from barely acceptable when working on bottoms with hard sand, shells, mussels, grass or seaweed. In those bottoms, they rarely caught easily in my experience on all of my boats and assistance towing boats I've run.

Had a friend I told about my distrust in the lightness of the fortress, even with chain....one day his 26 hydrosports went dead and he drug over 1/2 mile and through a bridge at over 2 knots before it caught...he got rid of it the next day as his primary.

I don't think fortress/danforths are bad...just tough to set...once set are tigers. That's why I sharpen the tips to the point where I think if the manufacturers did it that sharp....there would be way to much gel damage and blood.
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Old 08-14-2012, 06:27 PM   #85
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Psneeld,
When you sharpen the tips of your Dans do you get them regalvanized? I think the Fortresses are fairly sharp from the man but I'm quite sure they aren't sharper from the factory as they must be thinking they'd get damaged too soon. My Dan has only failed once (totally) in very shallow water on dense weed and hard sand.
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Old 08-14-2012, 06:31 PM   #86
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Psneeld,
When you sharpen the tips of your Dans do you get them regalvanized? I think the Fortresses are fairly sharp from the man but I'm quite sure they aren't sharper from the factory as they must be thinking they'd get damaged too soon. My Dan has only failed once (totally) in very shallow water on dense weed and hard sand.
Spray cold galvanizing is what I have used...not great but I don't see a choice...left unsharpened...I wouldn't even carry a danforth/fortress....but true the fortress is pretty sharp to begin with.
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Old 08-14-2012, 06:46 PM   #87
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The times we have used our FX23 in its stern anchor role the bottoms have been weedy-ish. Not dense weed but with eelgrass and such on a mud bottom. Not hard, not ooze, but in between. We do not have the flukes set at the greater "mud" mud angle.

Each time I've deployed and "set" the anchor by hand from the dinghy, later pulling on the rode as hard as we could from the GB. And it always dug right in and held very well even on the occasions the wind did a 180 and we hung on the Fortress instead of the mooring buoy.

The ends of the flukes on the Fortress are certainly sharper than the flukes/fluke on a Bruce, CQR, etc. so we've never seen any reason in the way we've used the anchor so far to wish they were sharper.

But perhaps on a really hard bottom it would make a significant difference, I don't know.
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Old 08-17-2012, 01:20 AM   #88
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Good onya Bruce, I have the exact same size/weight SS, and I'm tempted to advise, especially if your winch is a bit tired, lose the slot bolt and just trust it.
Peter, I`ll do just that. Odd,only the no.6 on display( sold and tagged) had the slot bolt, the one delivered (not the display one) has one too. Should have asked Rex.
Maybe I was unkind to the Muir windlass; I checked retrieval speed: Cougar(>42ft) 46ft/min, Cheetah (42-55ft) 48ft/min. Slow enough for mine to be within normal limits, still slower than I`d like. Moral of the story: a fit cheetah will probably just catch a cougar (except they live on different continents). BruceK
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