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Re: Chain and Anchor

ngtnewington Newington
 

The original stainless anchor is probably a WASI Beugel anchor. It is a good anchor for sure but in my opinion your 33kg Rocna is much better and nearly 30% bigger.

I recently demoted my 30kg WASI to the second anchor and bought a 37Kg Spade, as the primary anchor. I can confirm that the Spade appears to be superior by a large margin. My evidence is of course anecdotal but:

I recently left Amelia in a harbour in Kefalonia for a few weeks. She is fixed to a mooring block plus my anchor. We are in 3m depth. The Spade is set with 50m of chain. The bottom is not great holding. There is about 30cm of dead organic matter then soft silty mud. I dived it. I set the Spade with full RPM and she went down and set solid. I then thought it would be interesting to set the WASI too.After all I was going to leave Amelia whilst I returned to the UK. I laid it with the dinghy; 10m chain and 50m of rope. Remember the boat is stern to a dock and fixed with a mooring and the Spade. I started to winch in the WASI until it was just taught. I then had a coffee and left it to settle.  
I then began to winch in on the WASI. It kept coming all the way home ploughing a nice furrow in the sea bed!!!! So it ended up back on the bow roller.
So there you have it...
By the way whilst enjoying my evening drink several yachts came in to anchor, mostly using Delta’s and most of them either dragged or could not get a set....so the holding is indeed poor.

Nick
S/Y Amelia 
AML 54-019

On 1 Sep 2019, at 15:20, Herbert Lackner <herbert@...> wrote:

Hi Amelians,

an excellent topic to discuss - anchor and chain :-) 

just booked the flights back to Mexico and "in preparation" for the next season... and therefore questions...

KALI MERA has 90 Meters of 10mm stainless steel chain (316), unfortunately the chain is ~ 13 years old and "end of life" and we have to replace it (galvanic corrosion).

We carry two anchors:
1. Rocna 33 (kg) galvanized main anchor, very satisfied with it. worked perfect in all conditions the last 15.000 miles, maybe a little bit oversized for the Santorin
2. the original Amel stainless steel anchor (25kg) as spare anchor, never used it up to now (I do not know what the manufacturer is, it looks very similar to a Spade, have seen it on many other Amels already, I believe it has been the Amel standard Anchor)

This has been the setup of the boat when we purchased her, and now, as we have to replace the chain, I am thinking what the best option would be

a) I could buy a Wälder stainless steel chain, certified for tropic climate,  made of 1.4462 steel, expensive but very reliable and no problems with galvanic corrosion in warm water
b)  could buy standard galvanized steel chain

We prefer to have the stainless steel chain again because it stays so clean and no problems "in operation"...
argument against stainless steel chain is (beside the price): the Rocna 33 is not stainless, so there might be some "galvanic problems" when connecting the chain to the anchor. To avoid that we could use the Amel factory supplied stainless anchor as a main anchor and use the Rocna as spare, but we do not know if it works as good as the Rocna and it is only 25kg and not 33kg.

So, questions:
* How is the Original stainless Anchor 25 compared to the Rocna 33 ? Any experiences? (we are currently in Mexico and will head to the south pacific in one or two years)
* Is there a problem when connecting the new 1.446 Cromox chain to the galvanized Rocna? Wälder told me that these might cause rust on the chain.

thank you very much for your advise and experiences

fair winds,

herbert
SN120 KALI MERA, Mazatlan

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