I thought this might be of interest to the OCC community:
Hi all,
I was writing up my guidelines or my “philosophy” (if you will) of fitting out widely wandering sailboats and, certainly, my leaning toward the conservative and the time-tested was part of my stance when this email came in from a friend sailing the Canadian Maritimes.
on the way back we were caught by Hurricane Dorian at the head of Ship Harbour. We were sailing in tandem with our friends and because they had an engine problem we got delayed and never made it back to base at Shinning Waters before it hit. I anchored at the head of the bay, about 10 miles inland, surrounded by forest and high hills on three sides. I was in 8 meters of water and had 100m of chain and a big Rocna in front. Long story short, the boat held all night in 75-80 kts of wind and 3 meter storm surge, but when the wind shifted in the morning the Rocna dislodged from its initial position and dragged. Our friends lost their boat on the rocks in the nearby cove, and Northern Light was on her side on a small beach off an islet, about 100m away.
For a long time, back when the new generation anchors emerged, I tried to figure how to get a Rocna anchor to sit comfortably on the anchor platform of Alchemy, a Valiant 42. They were all the rage, and anchoring in the Mediteranean was often difficult with my CQR. I failed and did not purchase one.
It was a good few years later that reports started trickling in about Rocna’s bad habit of not re-setting after a wind shift (or current change if in a tidal stream): bad enough if you are on board but potentially a lost boat if you are on a hike or other excursion. In addition to the anecdotal reports, I know of three very experienced cruisers who had their Rocnas fail to reset, two were in the really isolated areas of Greenland and Brazil.*
So, one of my “guidelines” is the unpredictability of future performance without lots of field reports from numerous people who are out-there-doing-that: in other words, the early adapters: bless them. Many of the early adapter’s make this work as they have had enough interest to make their early adapting project a consuming hobby and are so immersed that they can trouble-shoot on the fly and then report back so that later iterations are less likely to have the problem: again, bless them. For most widely wandering boats, a successful cruise is more likely with gear that has passed the test of time and where gear is more likely well understood.
This is, in part, why I believe mission critical gear should have at least 5 years of field experience, preferably 10, before it can be recommended to a widely wandering boat. It takes time for problems to emerge and the found problems can be “publicized” (passed around the boatyard etc.). (And the marine publishing industry, in my observation, is far more committed to keeping problematic gear/design, engineering etc. a trade secret than they are in informing the public: their bottom line is more important than the average sailor’s welfare).
This rather indirect form of R&D is understandable and not really to be criticized and exists largely because of the small volume of product that is likely to be sold: as opposed to the auto industry where production is counted in the many millions. They can and do spend much $$ and time on R&D, so we are used to products hitting the shelves largely vetted for problems: not so the marine industry. But this indirect R&D does take time.
My friend and crew were fine, but the boat suffered $30k in damages.
My best, Dick Stevenson, s/v Alchemy
*I believe that the marine industry does the cruising community a dis-service by not being more public about bad habits/poor design etc. among the products and boats being flogged (I only know of Practical Sailor to have mentioned this issue with Rocnas). I believe my friend did not know about Rocna’s bad habit of not re-setting or he could have done what another friend does with his Rocna. Whenever there is a significant wind shift, he raises anchor, cleans off the anchor and re-anchors facing the new direction. Rocna’s are a very effective anchor in one direction as is shown by the communication from my friend above. I am sure it would not have been fun, but, had he known, my friend could have raised anchor in the wind shift and re-set a clean anchor and been fine.