*JimH* wrote:
wrote in message
ups.com...


*JimH* wrote:
wrote in message
oups.com...


*JimH* wrote:
"Real Name" wrote in message
...
Has anyone else tried the Fortress anchor and been disappointed with
them?
I have found once the anchor bites in and is set, it is a great
anchor.
The problem is if you are in a current, the anchor "sails" in the
water,
making it very difficult to set the hook.




We had a Fortress on our 32 footer (I believe it was an FX 16) with 5
feet
of chain rode....it held great in all types of seas in sand, mud and
rocky
bottoms. Light weight and good holding power.

A great anchor that never let us down.



Nowhere nearly enough chain, IMO. If it "never let you down" it may not
have been all that severely tested. I personally subscribe to theory
that places enormous importance on rode and scope, and a bit less on
the actual "weight" of the anchor. A goofily light weight anchor will
bounce along the bottom and not
catch a set- but for any hook with enough mass to get down and pres
against the bottom the design of the anchor is going to be more
important to the set and hold than the listed weight.

Old Bruce Danforth
Rode to town
Just to warn his daughter
"Don't wish and hope,
Use lots of scope
When hooking under water."

There is almost no such thing as too much chain. I have only 50-feet,
and consider that a pretty minimal amount of chain for my mixed rode.


Well it could have been 6 or 8 feet of chain rode.......my wife was the
wench as we did not have an electric windlass. We never made it a habit
to
anchor in severe seas, so I guess it was never severely tested. Scope
was
always at least 7:1 and I had the line marked every 10 feet.

This 'goofily light weight anchor' never bounced around the bottom for
us.
It is designed to catch and hold, even with minimal chain rode.

Have you ever used a Fortress anchor Chuck?



1) Never personally used a Fortress Anchor, and I referred to goofily
light weight anchors in a generic sense, not to the Fortress brand
specifically.

2) A heavier anchor holds a larger boat more by virtue of the fact that
the flukes will be larger than because the anchor itself weighs more.
Example; Let's say a 20-foot boat uses an 8-pound anchor. Our
hypothetical craft, a Docknocker 195, weighs 4000 pounds. The owner of
the Docknocker 195 picks the right lottery numbers and upgrades to a
Pilescraper Express that weighs 40,000 pounds. Ten times the weight
doesn't require a ten times heavier anchor, and odds are that 40,000
pound boat could safely use an anchor that weighs only 4-6 times as
much as the 8-pound anchor on the 4000 pound boat.

An anchor with enough weight to reach and bear down on the bottom
should set if its the proper type of anchor for bottom conditions, and
will likely hold if the flukes dig in deeply enough and can "grip"
enough of the bottom to resist the pull of the boat. Heavier anchors
hold better moreso because they have larger flukes rather than the
additional 10, 20, or 30 pounds of weight.

3)Curious whether or not you used to carry a bass drum. In all the old
movies
where the galley slaves are being lashed into service, somebody is
always pounding out the rowing cadence on a bass drum. It might have
been a handy accessory- your could have pounded on the drum (with the
hand that wasn't holding a cold beverage) and hollered "haul, wench!"
while Mrs. H was up on the foredeck muscling in the wet and muddy rode.
just joking! Your wife is apparently *much* better trained and more
obedient than mine. :-)


She was not *trained* Chuck....why do you refer to her as that? One trains
a dog, not ones wife.

Regardless, she had no problem with the anchor duty....we worked as a team.
There was no muscling up the anchor as I had the boat do the work to break
it free. And the nice thing about the Fortress is that it is light and easy
to manually retrieve.

"Trained and obedient" is supposed to be humorous. Is this the first
time you have heard somebody refer, humorously, to a "well-trained"
spouse?

In reality, training a wife is more like trying to train a cat- rather
than a dog. As long as you ask the cat to do something it actually
wants to do, it goes along and lets you pretend you're in charge. :-)

wrote in message
oups.com...


*JimH* wrote:
wrote in message
ups.com...


*JimH* wrote:
wrote in message
oups.com...


*JimH* wrote:
"Real Name" wrote in message
...
Has anyone else tried the Fortress anchor and been disappointed
with
them?
I have found once the anchor bites in and is set, it is a great
anchor.
The problem is if you are in a current, the anchor "sails" in the
water,
making it very difficult to set the hook.




We had a Fortress on our 32 footer (I believe it was an FX 16) with
5
feet
of chain rode....it held great in all types of seas in sand, mud
and
rocky
bottoms. Light weight and good holding power.

A great anchor that never let us down.



Nowhere nearly enough chain, IMO. If it "never let you down" it may
not
have been all that severely tested. I personally subscribe to theory
that places enormous importance on rode and scope, and a bit less on
the actual "weight" of the anchor. A goofily light weight anchor
will
bounce along the bottom and not
catch a set- but for any hook with enough mass to get down and pres
against the bottom the design of the anchor is going to be more
important to the set and hold than the listed weight.

Old Bruce Danforth
Rode to town
Just to warn his daughter
"Don't wish and hope,
Use lots of scope
When hooking under water."

There is almost no such thing as too much chain. I have only
50-feet,
and consider that a pretty minimal amount of chain for my mixed
rode.


Well it could have been 6 or 8 feet of chain rode.......my wife was
the
anchor winch as we did not have an electric windlass. We never made
it a habit
to
anchor in severe seas, so I guess it was never severely tested.
Scope
was
always at least 7:1 and I had the line marked every 10 feet.

This 'goofily light weight anchor' never bounced around the bottom for
us.
It is designed to catch and hold, even with minimal chain rode.

Have you ever used a Fortress anchor Chuck?



1) Never personally used a Fortress Anchor, and I referred to goofily
light weight anchors in a generic sense, not to the Fortress brand
specifically.

2) A heavier anchor holds a larger boat more by virtue of the fact that
the flukes will be larger than because the anchor itself weighs more.
Example; Let's say a 20-foot boat uses an 8-pound anchor. Our
hypothetical craft, a Docknocker 195, weighs 4000 pounds. The owner of
the Docknocker 195 picks the right lottery numbers and upgrades to a
Pilescraper Express that weighs 40,000 pounds. Ten times the weight
doesn't require a ten times heavier anchor, and odds are that 40,000
pound boat could safely use an anchor that weighs only 4-6 times as
much as the 8-pound anchor on the 4000 pound boat.

An anchor with enough weight to reach and bear down on the bottom
should set if its the proper type of anchor for bottom conditions, and
will likely hold if the flukes dig in deeply enough and can "grip"
enough of the bottom to resist the pull of the boat. Heavier anchors
hold better moreso because they have larger flukes rather than the
additional 10, 20, or 30 pounds of weight.

3)Curious whether or not you used to carry a bass drum. In all the old
movies
where the galley slaves are being lashed into service, somebody is
always pounding out the rowing cadence on a bass drum. It might have
been a handy accessory- your could have pounded on the drum (with the
hand that wasn't holding a cold beverage) and hollered "haul, wench!"
while Mrs. H was up on the foredeck muscling in the wet and muddy rode.
just joking! Your wife is apparently *much* better trained and more
obedient than mine. :-)


She was not *trained* Chuck....why do you refer to her as that? One
trains
a dog, not ones wife.

Regardless, she had no problem with the anchor duty....we worked as a
team.
There was no muscling up the anchor as I had the boat do the work to
break
it free. And the nice thing about the Fortress is that it is light and
easy
to manually retrieve.

"Trained and obedient" is supposed to be humorous. Is this the first
time you have heard somebody refer, humorously, to a "well-trained"
spouse?

In reality, training a wife is more like trying to train a cat- rather
than a dog. As long as you ask the cat to do something it actually
wants to do, it goes along and lets you pretend you're in charge. :-)


Gotcha.

*JimH* wrote:
wrote in message
ups.com...


*JimH* wrote:

wrote in message
egroups.com...


*JimH* wrote:

"Real Name" wrote in message
...

Has anyone else tried the Fortress anchor and been disappointed with
them?
I have found once the anchor bites in and is set, it is a great
anchor.
The problem is if you are in a current, the anchor "sails" in the
water,
making it very difficult to set the hook.




We had a Fortress on our 32 footer (I believe it was an FX 16) with 5
feet
of chain rode....it held great in all types of seas in sand, mud and
rocky
bottoms. Light weight and good holding power.

A great anchor that never let us down.



Nowhere nearly enough chain, IMO. If it "never let you down" it may not
have been all that severely tested. I personally subscribe to theory
that places enormous importance on rode and scope, and a bit less on
the actual "weight" of the anchor. A goofily light weight anchor will
bounce along the bottom and not
catch a set- but for any hook with enough mass to get down and pres
against the bottom the design of the anchor is going to be more
important to the set and hold than the listed weight.

Old Bruce Danforth
Rode to town
Just to warn his daughter
"Don't wish and hope,
Use lots of scope
When hooking under water."

There is almost no such thing as too much chain. I have only 50-feet,
and consider that a pretty minimal amount of chain for my mixed rode.


Well it could have been 6 or 8 feet of chain rode.......my wife was the
wench as we did not have an electric windlass. We never made it a habit
to
anchor in severe seas, so I guess it was never severely tested. Scope
was
always at least 7:1 and I had the line marked every 10 feet.

This 'goofily light weight anchor' never bounced around the bottom for
us.
It is designed to catch and hold, even with minimal chain rode.

Have you ever used a Fortress anchor Chuck?



1) Never personally used a Fortress Anchor, and I referred to goofily
light weight anchors in a generic sense, not to the Fortress brand
specifically.

2) A heavier anchor holds a larger boat more by virtue of the fact that
the flukes will be larger than because the anchor itself weighs more.
Example; Let's say a 20-foot boat uses an 8-pound anchor. Our
hypothetical craft, a Docknocker 195, weighs 4000 pounds. The owner of
the Docknocker 195 picks the right lottery numbers and upgrades to a
Pilescraper Express that weighs 40,000 pounds. Ten times the weight
doesn't require a ten times heavier anchor, and odds are that 40,000
pound boat could safely use an anchor that weighs only 4-6 times as
much as the 8-pound anchor on the 4000 pound boat.

An anchor with enough weight to reach and bear down on the bottom
should set if its the proper type of anchor for bottom conditions, and
will likely hold if the flukes dig in deeply enough and can "grip"
enough of the bottom to resist the pull of the boat. Heavier anchors
hold better moreso because they have larger flukes rather than the
additional 10, 20, or 30 pounds of weight.

3)Curious whether or not you used to carry a bass drum. In all the old
movies
where the galley slaves are being lashed into service, somebody is
always pounding out the rowing cadence on a bass drum. It might have
been a handy accessory- your could have pounded on the drum (with the
hand that wasn't holding a cold beverage) and hollered "haul, wench!"
while Mrs. H was up on the foredeck muscling in the wet and muddy rode.
just joking! Your wife is apparently *much* better trained and more
obedient than mine. :-)



She was not *trained* Chuck....why do you refer to her as that? One trains
a dog, not ones wife.

Regardless, she had no problem with the anchor duty....we worked as a team.
There was no muscling up the anchor as I had the boat do the work to break
it free. And the nice thing about the Fortress is that it is light and easy
to manually retrieve.


And to think...all the training seminars & courses my co-workers and I
were sent on. All the time our employer was refering to us as 'dogs'.

Gould,
I think the Fortress makes a nice lunch hook in calm waters.


wrote in message
ups.com...


*JimH* wrote:
wrote in message
oups.com...


*JimH* wrote:
"Real Name" wrote in message
...
Has anyone else tried the Fortress anchor and been disappointed with
them?
I have found once the anchor bites in and is set, it is a great
anchor.
The problem is if you are in a current, the anchor "sails" in the
water,
making it very difficult to set the hook.




We had a Fortress on our 32 footer (I believe it was an FX 16) with 5
feet
of chain rode....it held great in all types of seas in sand, mud and
rocky
bottoms. Light weight and good holding power.

A great anchor that never let us down.



Nowhere nearly enough chain, IMO. If it "never let you down" it may not
have been all that severely tested. I personally subscribe to theory
that places enormous importance on rode and scope, and a bit less on
the actual "weight" of the anchor. A goofily light weight anchor will
bounce along the bottom and not
catch a set- but for any hook with enough mass to get down and pres
against the bottom the design of the anchor is going to be more
important to the set and hold than the listed weight.

Old Bruce Danforth
Rode to town
Just to warn his daughter
"Don't wish and hope,
Use lots of scope
When hooking under water."

There is almost no such thing as too much chain. I have only 50-feet,
and consider that a pretty minimal amount of chain for my mixed rode.


Well it could have been 6 or 8 feet of chain rode.......my wife was the
wench as we did not have an electric windlass. We never made it a habit
to
anchor in severe seas, so I guess it was never severely tested. Scope
was
always at least 7:1 and I had the line marked every 10 feet.

This 'goofily light weight anchor' never bounced around the bottom for
us.
It is designed to catch and hold, even with minimal chain rode.

Have you ever used a Fortress anchor Chuck?



1) Never personally used a Fortress Anchor, and I referred to goofily
light weight anchors in a generic sense, not to the Fortress brand
specifically.

2) A heavier anchor holds a larger boat more by virtue of the fact that
the flukes will be larger than because the anchor itself weighs more.
Example; Let's say a 20-foot boat uses an 8-pound anchor. Our
hypothetical craft, a Docknocker 195, weighs 4000 pounds. The owner of
the Docknocker 195 picks the right lottery numbers and upgrades to a
Pilescraper Express that weighs 40,000 pounds. Ten times the weight
doesn't require a ten times heavier anchor, and odds are that 40,000
pound boat could safely use an anchor that weighs only 4-6 times as
much as the 8-pound anchor on the 4000 pound boat.

An anchor with enough weight to reach and bear down on the bottom
should set if its the proper type of anchor for bottom conditions, and
will likely hold if the flukes dig in deeply enough and can "grip"
enough of the bottom to resist the pull of the boat. Heavier anchors
hold better moreso because they have larger flukes rather than the
additional 10, 20, or 30 pounds of weight.

3)Curious whether or not you used to carry a bass drum. In all the old
movies
where the galley slaves are being lashed into service, somebody is
always pounding out the rowing cadence on a bass drum. It might have
been a handy accessory- your could have pounded on the drum (with the
hand that wasn't holding a cold beverage) and hollered "haul, wench!"
while Mrs. H was up on the foredeck muscling in the wet and muddy rode.
just joking! Your wife is apparently *much* better trained and more
obedient than mine. :-)

"Real Name" wrote in message
...
Gould,
I think the Fortress makes a nice lunch hook in calm waters.


They are a true working anchor that never failed us on Lake Erie, not just a
nice lunch hook in calm waters.

Which Fortress do you own?

JimH,
It is a FX 16, which is one anchor higher than recommended for my boat The
reason I only use it for a lunch anchor is I am concerned that the anchor
might break loose if the wind changes. Without the weight I am not
comfortable that the anchor will reset on it's own.

I have found once the anchor is set, it will hold it's own under load, but
if the wind changes 180 degrees it will break free.



"*JimH*" wrote in message
...

"Real Name" wrote in message
...
Gould,
I think the Fortress makes a nice lunch hook in calm waters.


They are a true working anchor that never failed us on Lake Erie, not just
a nice lunch hook in calm waters.

Which Fortress do you own?

"Real Name" wrote in message
...
JimH,
It is a FX 16, which is one anchor higher than recommended for my boat
The reason I only use it for a lunch anchor is I am concerned that the
anchor might break loose if the wind changes. Without the weight I am not
comfortable that the anchor will reset on it's own.

I have found once the anchor is set, it will hold it's own under load, but
if the wind changes 180 degrees it will break free.


As will all danforth type anchors.

JimH,
So in your experience, the Fortress set as easily as a heavier Danforth? In
my experience, the Fortress was great once it was set, but you had to work
harder to get it set.


"*JimH*" wrote in message
...

"Real Name" wrote in message
...
JimH,
It is a FX 16, which is one anchor higher than recommended for my boat
The reason I only use it for a lunch anchor is I am concerned that the
anchor might break loose if the wind changes. Without the weight I am
not comfortable that the anchor will reset on it's own.

I have found once the anchor is set, it will hold it's own under load,
but if the wind changes 180 degrees it will break free.


As will all danforth type anchors.

"Real Name" wrote in message
...
JimH,
So in your experience, the Fortress set as easily as a heavier Danforth?
In my experience, the Fortress was great once it was set, but you had to
work harder to get it set.



Perhaps easier. We have a mainly mud or sand bottom in Lake Erie. I never
had a problem setting it. Once enough line were let out and tied off I
would usually put the boat in reverse to ensure it was caught tight.

"*JimH*" wrote in message
...

"Real Name" wrote in message
...
JimH,
So in your experience, the Fortress set as easily as a heavier Danforth?
In my experience, the Fortress was great once it was set, but you had to
work harder to get it set.



Perhaps easier. We have a mainly mud or sand bottom in Lake Erie. I
never had a problem setting it. Once enough line was let out and tied off
I would usually put the boat in reverse to ensure it was caught tight.



edit