[Rhodes22-list] PS & WM Rant

[Bill Effros]

Thanks to all who helped put the PS Soft Mud Anchoring piece in my 
hands.  I've been meaning to write this rant for a long time.  As often 
happens with PS reviews -- after reading the article, I have smoke 
coming out of my ears.

For starters, people like to say PS is the Consumer Reports of sailing.  
Nothing could be further from the truth.  IMHO PS is much too close to 
West Marine.  WM provides too much equipment, advice and testing 
facilities to PS to consider PS an "independent" testing facility.  I 
like WM, but I don't like PS reviews of WM products because I know I 
can't trust them.  Another manufacturer's product will be judged 
"unacceptable" but WMs product with the exact same defects will be 
judged "good but we don't like this feature."

A lot of PS advice seems to be based on WM advisers--and a lot of WM 
advisers are designed to sell more expensive products.  The whole field 
of anchoring is an excellent case in point.  WM is pushing the anchors 
that cost the most.  PS is validating this advice, not making 
independent judgments.

I own no stock in Fortress.  I own many non-Fortress anchors.  I have no 
stake in the outcome of PS testing, because I've done my own testing, 
and I'm stunned at how superior the Fortress anchor is when compared to 
every other comparable anchor I have tested.

PS has rigged the testing to ensure that a $50 anchoring solution which 
is probably the best answer for 90% of PS readers appears inferior to 
vastly more expensive anchoring solutions.

Let's start by looking at the anchors they have chosen to compare.  They 
test a 7 lb. Fortress "Danforth Style" against a 25 lb. West Marine 
"Danforth Style" and conclude that they are roughly equivalent, with the 
power rating favoring the WM anchor.

Where is the 25 lb. Fortress anchor in the test?  Not there--because it 
would slaughter every other anchor in the test, and no one would buy all 
this expensive equipment -- high priced anchor, chain, windlass, bow 
hardware, etc. -- if they knew the simpler, lighter anchor actually 
works better.

According to the PS test, the 7 lb. Fortress had 425 lbs. of holding 
power when set in soft mud at the hard-sand fluke angle.  According to 
the Fortress site, the same anchor, at the same setting, had 420 lbs. of 
holding power--close enough for Rhodes owners to say we can trust the 
Fortress numbers.

The Fortress FX-37 is a 21 lb. anchor.  According to Fortress, it has 
1800 lbs. of holding power in soft mud when set for use in hard sand.  
This is more than 3 times as powerful as the WM "Danforth-Style" anchor 
in the test--and the WM is the most powerful of any anchor tested.

But now we come to the issue of soft mud -- the subject of the anchoring 
test.  The Fortress anchor, and only the Fortress anchor among 
"Danforth-Type" anchors has the ability to change the angle of the 
flukes to improve soft mud anchoring.  But PS chooses to test the "Hard 
Sand" setting in a "soft mud" situation.  Why?

In soft mud, according to the manufacturer,  the 21 lb. Fortress anchor 
has 3600 pounds of holding power vs. the WM 25 lb. tested anchor at 500 
lbs.  Which would you pick if you believed you needed vast holding power 
to be on the "safe side"?

None of the tested anchors even approached 3600 lbs. of holding power in 
any kind of bottom.  But, according to the Fortress site, the 21lb. 
Fortress in hard sand, set for hard sand had 12,000 lbs. of holding power. 

I have no idea if this number has any meaning at all.  What I do know is 
that PS's failure to include a similar anchor in its test made the 
Fortress anchor look bad, and the WM anchor look good, and that there is 
a pattern to this in PS testing.

The test methodology used by PS in this anchoring test is ludicrous.  
Putting a winch on the back of a pickup truck and dragging anchors 
through shallow water at an angle that cannot be duplicated from most 
boats tells you nothing about the ability of those anchors to hold in 
real life situations.

The mud gets plowed up from one test to the next.  I don't know if 
there's an advantage to going first or going last, but I do know they 
are not testing the same bottom by the 50th pull. 

And what about wading into the water to set the points of the anchors?  
What's that about? 

Looking at the photo at the top of the article, it's a little hard to 
imagine how they manage the claimed scope.  They said they achieved 3:1 
scope with that rig.  They also said they pull 20 feet of wire off the 
winch, attach the wire to a dynamometer, the dynamometer to a shackle, 
the shackle to a rope of unspecified length, the rope to 10 feet of 
steel chain, and the chain to an anchor at least a foot long.  If the 
rope is 10 feet long, the minimum length of the rig is around 45 feet, 
and the water depth at that point must be around 15 feet.

However, they imply that they also can anchor at 7:1 scope from the same 
location. To do that, they must lengthen the rope portion of the rig so 
that the overall length goes from 45 to 105 feet, but the bottom must 
stay constant at  around 15 feet.  And they claim to be able to 
consistently hand set the anchors by wading into roughly 15 feet of 
water.  I'm not buying it. 

Which brings us back to the brick and the kite.  You don't anchor by 
placing the points of an anchor into the bottom and then trying to yank 
the points out with a winch.  This is like jerking the hook out of the 
mouth of a fish and saying that the hook doesn't work.

And what's the purpose of the chain?  The chain never lies on the 
bottom.  It's too short to create a catenary curve.  It's too light to 
serve as helper metal.  Why is it there at all?

The whole write-up looks like Korean science to me.  It is designed to 
prove a pre-determined result with graphs and tables that when examined 
make no sense.  These observations are not limited to anchoring.  In my 
view, PS is biased in favor of WM across the board.

There!  I feel better.

Bill Effros