Minutiae not withstanding, Nigel Calder offered the same anecdotal thoughts and opinions as one can read in the past few months of TF threads and posts on anchoring. Calder in fact says his opinions are anecdotal which is fitting with anchors and anchoring in real life.
Why is this? As noted by Calder and us here, each anchor site, winds and bottom are different. But all seem in agreement that new design anchors appear to be better.
Missing from Calder's article and often forgotten on TF is the simple anecdotal finding that a Too Heavy older design anchor works very well also. Advertisers in PMM don't like to hear this and Calder and writers don't get published if old fashioned things hold sway.
Agree, we tend to forget people sailed round the world, and still do, anchoring as they go using old fashioned anchors and they did not end up on the beach. I'm not going to define 'old fashioned' but I see lots of vessels in out of the way places using CQRs, Deltas and Bruces (or variants). The owners must be happy as by now they will have heard of 'modern' anchors (and I'm not going to define modern either!), they are ready available, in the grand scheme of things not that expensive (except for genuine CQRs) - but they do not change from those old fashioned to the modern types.
Anchors seem very forgiving and despite being old fashioned (or modern) nor set as current thinking demands they do seem to 'work' most of the time in most places.
But I'm not sufficiently convinced to dust off our old genuine CQR is favour of our modern product and we would not return to the idea that one anchor (old or new) suits every environment (which might bring us back to the Chesapeake tests?).
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