Rocna Anchors
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If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.
Arcticspud
Veteran Member
We have had ours for a year and have used it extensively throughout the Puget sound. It is awesome. One of the anchor comparison test I read stated that the only problem with the Rocna anchor is the price. It set and held consistently the best is all conditions. I don't know about you, but when I am on the hook and it starts to blow, I'm not concerned about how much it cost. I want to know it is going to hold and it has.
It is the only anchor I will have now.
It is the only anchor I will have now.
Xsbank
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I think the price is outrageous. You know that the SL anchors are all made in China, are just different shapes and they are at least half the price.
One day, when someone writes the economic history of the West, they will shake their heads with wonder about how we could be so stupid as to give away our manufacturing sector for a few quick bucks and consign millions of our children to lives in the service industry. Talk about having our collective heads up our a$$es.
Go into a Home Depot and look at the $300 cordless drills, with names like Bosch and Dewalt and Mikita, all made in China. All that prosperity in China instead of Ontario or New York, so they can come back over here and buy the best properties and drive Bentleys. All those people who used to make Dewalt drills now can't afford to buy one on a fast-food salary. Stupid stupid stupid.
Sorry for the rant........
One day, when someone writes the economic history of the West, they will shake their heads with wonder about how we could be so stupid as to give away our manufacturing sector for a few quick bucks and consign millions of our children to lives in the service industry. Talk about having our collective heads up our a$$es.
Go into a Home Depot and look at the $300 cordless drills, with names like Bosch and Dewalt and Mikita, all made in China. All that prosperity in China instead of Ontario or New York, so they can come back over here and buy the best properties and drive Bentleys. All those people who used to make Dewalt drills now can't afford to buy one on a fast-food salary. Stupid stupid stupid.
Sorry for the rant........
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Don't apologise for that rant. We often feel exactly the same here in Oz, especially here in Queensland, when they are all flooding over to buy up prime waterfront property to place their children in while at school here, but the parents return to China to make their profits, meanwhile pushing prices up out of range of those of us who live here. I'd love to own a home with a pontoon jetty for the boat at the bottom of the garden, but won't happen now…
But if you want to continue the rant - we had better go over to the Off Topic forum...
But if you want to continue the rant - we had better go over to the Off Topic forum...
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Bay Pelican
Moderator Emeritus
If you can fit the 40 kg, go with the 40. When I bought mine West Marine agreed to take it back if it did not fit, but it did fit.
av8r
Senior Member
This is our third season using a Rocna, and we drug it twice last week up in the Gulf Islands.
We have a 25kg Rocna with 5/16 chain on our 40’ Ocean Alexander and in general we have been happy with it. It hooks up nicely and has always kept us where we wanted to stay, except when it didn’t. We were fortunate that both times were daylight and we were able to watch the process unfold.
The first time occurred up in Princess Cove on Wallace Island in the British Columbia Gulf Islands. Princess Cove is a long narrow cove with rock sides and a famously soft mud bottom. It has probably a dozen stern-tie rings mounted about 40’ apart in the rock wall on one side of the cove. Convention in many of the parks in BC is to stern-tie with the anchor set in the middle of the channel. Although the forecast was for 10-15k winds out of the southwest we hoped the nw-se orientation of the cove would give us better winds.
Our stern-tie technique is to pick a ring, establish the angle we want on the rode and confirm it’s not across someone else’s anchor, pick the distance from the wall that gives us adequate scope and put down the anchor. We set it with idle or greater reverse, and we confirm distances with a laser rangefinder. The dinghy is side-tied and ready and the stern line is on a spool, so the Admiral runs the helm while I take the stern line in, loop it through the ring, and bring it back. We work the boat into position and check distances and depths again, and establish sight-lines and point them out to each other.
This time the wind was blowing directly down the channel from the SE at 10-12 mph, straight on the beam. Several boats had troubles getting in place, and several left. We had lunch and discussed the situation but when the wind picked up above 15 mph on the beam, the anchor started dragging so we released the stern line and left. When we pulled the anchor up the roll bar was completely covered with mud so it had gone in at least that deep. A big Danforth might have worked in the mud but we just went somewhere else.
The second time 3 days later we had anchored behind Dunsmuir Island in Ladysmith Harbor at low tide in 15’ on a bottom labeled mud and sand. We put out 120’, worked out to the end of it using the anchor alarm as reference, and backed down with more than just idle for a pretty solid set. I set a tight anchor alarm circle. We were awakened by the alarm about 0200 and both the chart-plotter and the anchor alarm showed we had moved to about 50’ abeam the anchor, but we stabilized there and stopped. I assumed we were just dragging the chain, and by the morning we were right back in the original position.
A change in the light breeze accompanied the next tide change and we watched the boat track directly over the anchor. That broke out the anchor when we reached the end of the chain, and we continued to drag at about a yard a minute. We had plenty of water and room so we just watched to see if it would reset, since Rocnas are supposed to be very good at resetting. After we were 20 yards past the break-out point it still had not reset so I started the engines and backed down on it, at which point it promptly reset. It seemed like a good set but left us with no margin on the proverbial lee shore and with the rising wind another boat had anchored on our original location so again, we went somewhere else.
In short, we like our Rocna a lot, but we don’t trust it very much. We use 2 independent anchor alarms now, and we set tight limits.
We have a 25kg Rocna with 5/16 chain on our 40’ Ocean Alexander and in general we have been happy with it. It hooks up nicely and has always kept us where we wanted to stay, except when it didn’t. We were fortunate that both times were daylight and we were able to watch the process unfold.
The first time occurred up in Princess Cove on Wallace Island in the British Columbia Gulf Islands. Princess Cove is a long narrow cove with rock sides and a famously soft mud bottom. It has probably a dozen stern-tie rings mounted about 40’ apart in the rock wall on one side of the cove. Convention in many of the parks in BC is to stern-tie with the anchor set in the middle of the channel. Although the forecast was for 10-15k winds out of the southwest we hoped the nw-se orientation of the cove would give us better winds.
Our stern-tie technique is to pick a ring, establish the angle we want on the rode and confirm it’s not across someone else’s anchor, pick the distance from the wall that gives us adequate scope and put down the anchor. We set it with idle or greater reverse, and we confirm distances with a laser rangefinder. The dinghy is side-tied and ready and the stern line is on a spool, so the Admiral runs the helm while I take the stern line in, loop it through the ring, and bring it back. We work the boat into position and check distances and depths again, and establish sight-lines and point them out to each other.
This time the wind was blowing directly down the channel from the SE at 10-12 mph, straight on the beam. Several boats had troubles getting in place, and several left. We had lunch and discussed the situation but when the wind picked up above 15 mph on the beam, the anchor started dragging so we released the stern line and left. When we pulled the anchor up the roll bar was completely covered with mud so it had gone in at least that deep. A big Danforth might have worked in the mud but we just went somewhere else.
The second time 3 days later we had anchored behind Dunsmuir Island in Ladysmith Harbor at low tide in 15’ on a bottom labeled mud and sand. We put out 120’, worked out to the end of it using the anchor alarm as reference, and backed down with more than just idle for a pretty solid set. I set a tight anchor alarm circle. We were awakened by the alarm about 0200 and both the chart-plotter and the anchor alarm showed we had moved to about 50’ abeam the anchor, but we stabilized there and stopped. I assumed we were just dragging the chain, and by the morning we were right back in the original position.
A change in the light breeze accompanied the next tide change and we watched the boat track directly over the anchor. That broke out the anchor when we reached the end of the chain, and we continued to drag at about a yard a minute. We had plenty of water and room so we just watched to see if it would reset, since Rocnas are supposed to be very good at resetting. After we were 20 yards past the break-out point it still had not reset so I started the engines and backed down on it, at which point it promptly reset. It seemed like a good set but left us with no margin on the proverbial lee shore and with the rising wind another boat had anchored on our original location so again, we went somewhere else.
In short, we like our Rocna a lot, but we don’t trust it very much. We use 2 independent anchor alarms now, and we set tight limits.
Marlinmike
Guru
30 year danford users, had it break loose on a number of occasions, especially when wind did a 180, picked up a Rocna and maybe a false sense of security, but that anchor drops and sets so hard the boat lurches forward. The wind changes direction it has had no effect for us, the boat sticks to one spot. We have anchored in sand/mud/weed bottoms and all the same results.
Nomad Willy
Guru
Janice's anchor is not just her anchor.
It's also her mooring.
So it's likely she may not be in over-kill mode at all.
There's a man in AK w a 45' boat w a 500lb anchor. Same thing. He does not have a mooring buoy hence the monster anchor.
In more than one anchor test the Rocna came up short in 3-1 scope anchoring. Anyone here had a problem in a blow (30+) at 3-1 ? Wouldn't be surprised as very few of us anchor at 3-1 in a blow. But stuff happens.
The Rocna guy said to the testers "we advise our customers to set at 5-1 and then shorten up scope." Good practice but does nothing to increase short scope performance. Of course one could just get a bigger anchor like we do w our Claws.
It's also her mooring.
So it's likely she may not be in over-kill mode at all.
There's a man in AK w a 45' boat w a 500lb anchor. Same thing. He does not have a mooring buoy hence the monster anchor.
In more than one anchor test the Rocna came up short in 3-1 scope anchoring. Anyone here had a problem in a blow (30+) at 3-1 ? Wouldn't be surprised as very few of us anchor at 3-1 in a blow. But stuff happens.
The Rocna guy said to the testers "we advise our customers to set at 5-1 and then shorten up scope." Good practice but does nothing to increase short scope performance. Of course one could just get a bigger anchor like we do w our Claws.
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We bought the first Rocna anchor sold in the Pacific Northwest. It was made under license from Rocna by Suncoast Marine in Vancouver, British Columbia. We were directed to Suncoast by Rocna when I talked to them in New Zealand because shipping the size of anchor we needed would have cost more than the anchor. which at the time cost close to $1,000. Rocna said that Suncoast used even better manufacturing methods than they did.
So our Rocna is made the way it is supposed to be made out of the materials it's supposed to be made of. As we cannot replace it, we keep it locked to the boat.
We have been using our Rocna for many years now and in a wide variety of bottoms--- packed mud, soft mud, oozy mud, gravel, sand, rock and gravel, weedy, etc. It has never once failed to set (yet) and it has never dragged (yet), even with two boats hanging on it in 30 knot winds.
But you know what they say about anchors. Every anchor sets perfectly until the day it doesn't, and no anchor ever drags until the day it does.
Based on our experience, the only other anchor we would consider using if we were in the market for one is the SARCA. While I feel the design of the Rocna is a wee bit superior to the SARCA (SARCA owners feel the opposite
), I believe both anchors are equally superb. I don't know if the SARCA is available in the US today or if the only way to get one is to buy it from the manufacturer and have it shipped over.I have heard good things about the Manson, but I have also heard and read enough bad things about the Manson, particularly having to do with its slotted shank, to not want one, at least not with the Rocna and SARCA on the market. I also believe the design of the Manson is inferior in a couple of specific ways to that of the Rocna and SARCA.
The current Rocna is made in China at Canadian Metals' wholly-owned subsidiary. This is NOT the same place that Rocnas were made when production was first shifted to China by Holdfast, who bought the rights to manufacture the Rocna from Peter Smith.
The way to identify a Chinese-made Rocna is by the raised lettering on the underside of the lip at the wide end of the fluke. If it has the name of the anchor there, it was made in China. I do not know how to tell the difference visually between the original and iffy Chinese-made Rocnas and the current ones.
With regards to China's manufacturing ability, they make what they are told to make, the way they are told to make it. Nordhavn's are made in Xiamen, China (I've been through the plant). Major components of our airplanes are made in China (We've worked in the plants). Their work is outstanding and is as good, and in some cases better, than than the work done in the US. In general, the attitude of the workers in China toward their work, at least in the plants I've been in, is superior to what I see on average in the US. How long that lasts remains to be seen.
The Chinese also make crap. So do we. That's because the things being ordered are specified to be crap.
I don't know anything about the current quality of Rocna anchors other than what I read. Were we in the market today, our first choice would probably be a SARCA assuming we could tolerate the shipping cost. Our second choice would be a new Canadian Metals Rocna simply because I don't know for sure about the quality. If I knew the Canadian Metals Rocna is as well made as the original Rocna we have now, I would buy it over the SARCA.
There would be no third choice.
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Sailor of Fortune
Guru
Welcome back!
psneeld
Guru
The rest of the info in the ID block is just as good...
It's about time ... either a new sheriff or at least a great deputy needs to be here a little more often...
Capt.Bill11
Guru
The rest of the info in the ID block is just as good...
It's about time ... either a new sheriff or at least a great deputy needs to be here a little more often...
Hey! I thought I was Marin's sock puppet!?
psneeld
Guru
Hey! I thought I was Marin's sock puppet!?
Well...he probably figured you are being too soft on me and like Batman....a few sequels never hurt anyone....
Be careful of some of the posters here...sock puppet means a whole 'nother thing to them....
Delfin
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I'm calling CSI.
Moonstruck
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Who was that masked man?
Nomad Willy
Guru
Only one person could make that post.
Dive right in .... but the water's deeeeep.
Dive right in .... but the water's deeeeep.
Delfin
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All I know is, I was standing here minding my own business and suddenly my wallet was gone, replaced with a 5,000 word essay on sanitary hose.Who was that masked man?
sunchaser
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God I hope so! Without Marin castigating, Walt knitting and RickB banished to the hinterland, this site is too darned vanilla.
Now about Rocnas, what is the point in getting one two sizes up from recommended? Doesn't that defeat the purpose of their presumed superior design?
psneeld
Guru
Is there an appeal process to reincarnate the dead and some voodoo to bring back all time fave's?
rochepoint
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Marin
Welcome back
Welcome back
Capt.Bill11
Guru
Because it just makes them, or any anchor you choose, more superior.
Plus you sleep better at night at anchor.
sunchaser
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Because it just makes them, or any anchor you choose, more superior.
Plus you sleep better at night at anchor.
Of course, a bigger anchor is better. But the whole game played by the modern anchors is superior holding strength with modern design trumps weight. WTH, I'll just stick with my big Bruce until it finally finds a bottom it wants to drag over. Then I'll buy a 50% heavier Rocna and extol its holding power.
Moonstruck
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We need to keep our new mystery poster out of the WANNABEES thread. It is not what he thinks it might be.
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angus99
Guru
Not a true pulpit, but a guy on the Defever Forum has nearly the same bow roller on his 44 as mine and says the 88-lb Rocna fits like it was designed for it. I went with an 80-lb Manson Supreme, installed today. It's snug, but it fits.
Capt.Bill11
Guru
Of course, a bigger anchor is better. But the whole game played by the modern anchors is superior holding strength with modern design trumps weight. WTH, I'll just stick with my big Bruce until it finally finds a bottom it wants to drag over. Then I'll buy a 50% heavier Rocna and extol its holding power.
Well they could be right. In that a smaller X, Y or Z modern style anchor can match or beat the holding power of a heavier old style anchor. But a heavy model of either anchor should hold to a higher point and perhaps hold better in a bottom condition that is less than ideal for its type. So it's up a size or two for me because I just want to sleep well at anchor.
Is you Bruce a genuine one, or a copy? Is it over sized at all?
sunchaser
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The Bruce is genuine and right sized. Has worked fine with gale force winds, all chain and snubber. If I ever replace it a 50% heavier Manson would be the choice but to date the Bruce has been a good holder in the PNW from pure sand to boulders. Lots of drops and as the galvanizing wears thinner replacement day will occur in a few years.
As pursued tirelessly by Delfin, the finding of bad metal used in some of the Rocnas turns me away from them no matter what the salesman says.
