CQR any thoughts?

[Unclematt]

I was reading the thread about Ronca vs Mantus M1 and decided to order a Rocna Vulcan then I was reading about a CQR and its holding power. If given the choice what would you guys go with? Thanks for all of your wisdom.

 

[Frosty]

Someone (you?) just asked this specific question in that other thread, and several of us have typed up answers. Not that more aren't welcome, but now we have duplicates going. I'll look up a link to the other thread and add it here.

Here is a link to the other current thread. Posts #47, #48, #49, and #50 address your question about buying a CQR now. Just so they don't get lost.

https://www.trawlerforum.com/forums/s42/rocna-mantus-m1-52403.html

 

[Simi 60]

Leave it on the land with the other farm implements.

 

[rslifkin]

The cqr is an old design. It's fussy to set and it holds ok, but not nearly as well as newer designs. I certainly wouldn't spend money on one.

 

[Unclematt]

Sorry about the duplicate I am new to this stuff and kind of get lost

 

[O C Diver]

CQRs come with boats; you don't buy them. It takes an effort sometimes to get them to set. I certainly wouldn't feel comfortable using one in an anchorage where you're expecting a reversal and possibly a reset.

Ted

 

[Frosty]

Sorry about the duplicate I am new to this stuff and kind of get lost

No worries. I just like to keep it organized both now and for future use. Not to the point of discouraging discourse though

 

[rsn48]

The usual polite and politically correct way to say it is - the CQR is a traditional design and the ROCNA is a modern design, go with modern.

 

[ghost]

I’ll replace my CQR with a more modern design at some point, but the guff you will get is as much hearsay as it is anything.

I’ve used my CQR for about a dozen years now and our tides reverse every time I use it. I don’t go careening around the bay every time I use it. It sets easy almost every time and basically doesn’t get upgraded because I really don’t need to.

Also realize that my CQR is 60 pounds for 48 foot of boat (comparable to 50+ ft today). It’s a respectable fit. It replaced the 35 pound CQR that came with the boat that was not, but smaller anchors was pretty common back in the day. The current recommended size for a Rocna at the upper end of the range is 120 pounds. Now I ask you, do you think the “modern” anchors are really THAT much better in design or is it just maybe possible that a larger reason that all the new anchors work so much better has something to do with the fact that they are routinely recommending anchors that are massively bigger, even twice as big than the “poor” designs they are marketing to replace? Just maybe?

Like I said, I’d like to replace my worn out CQR that gives me essentially no trouble. I just don’t believe in blind magic.

 

[Blissboat]

For 42 years my go-to yacht anchor has been the CQR, in sizes from 35# to 60#, on power and sailboats in the 36' to 60' range. My principal cruising grounds have been the Gulf of Mexico and Bahamas, with forays south as far as the Virgin Islands and north to New England. The plow has never got me in trouble.

That said, a few caveats. 1) I am meticulous (some say obsessive) about placing / setting the hook, and making sure it's solidly dug in before relaxing for the day; 2) Most of my anchoring is in clean sandy bottoms; and 3) I have zero experience with the ROCNA or the DELTA, either of which I might fall in love with after enough experience.

 

[rsn48]

The anchors on boats work, just some better than others. When I walk the marinas, the majority of anchors are traditional, some of older weird designs I'm surprised the boater is still using. Also lots of CQR's in BC marinas and I'm sure they work.

Its kind of like the old 6 cylinder cars in the 60's and 70's, they worked, got you from point A to B but they were under powered if you wanted to pass anyone. Today's 6 cylinder cars with double turbo's like BMW's go like stink.

Its not that CQR's don't work, they just aren't as good. I personally have owned and used Danforth, Fortress, Delta and Rocna. And the Rocna has proven to be the best of the lot. If I were purchasing today, I might go with another modern design, but I don't know which one.

 

[Simi 60]

Also realize that my CQR is 60 pounds for 48 foot of boat (comparable to 50+ ft today). It’s a respectable fit. It replaced the 35 pound CQR that came with the boat that was not, but smaller anchors was pretty common back in the day. The current recommended size for a Rocna at the upper end of the range is 120 pounds. Now I ask you, do you think the “modern” anchors are really THAT much better in design or is it just maybe possible that a larger reason that all the new anchors work so much better has something to do with the fact that they are routinely recommending anchors that are massively bigger, even twice as big than the “poor” designs they are marketing to replace? Just maybe?

Like I said, I’d like to replace my worn out CQR that gives me essentially no trouble. I just don’t believe in blind magic.

To counter that I have a mate with a 65 ft timber trawler of less weight and windage as us with 180lb CQR and he never drags
I have another mate with 65 ft of steel of similar weight and windage to us and he has a 300lb CQR and never drags

Both run 16mm chain and put plenty of it out

We have a Manson supreme of 150lb and.......never drag.
We regularly short scope on 13mm chain.

 

[rslifkin]

Sizing recommendations vary a lot between manufacturers. Each has different sizing criteria. In general, over time, people's willingness to accept occasional dragging, or needing massive scope and possibly multiple anchors in heavy weather has gone down. Desire to anchor at shorter scope has gone up, and ability to carry a heavy anchor has gone up as well due to windlasses becoming more common. So some of the older types were typically sized smaller just due to the factors of the time (not due to any performance difference).

As an example, I checked the recommended sizing for my boat for a bunch of different anchors:

Lewmar CQR: 35 lbs
Lewmar Delta: 35 lbs
Lewmar Claw: 33 or 44 lbs
Manson Plough (CQR copy): 60 or 80 lbs
Manson Ray (Claw type): 67 or 90 lbs
Manson Supreme: 45 or 60 lbs
Manson Boss: 35 or 45 lbs
Mantus M1/M2: 55 or 65 lbs
Rocna Original or Vulcan: 44 or 55 lbs
Spade: 44 or 55 lbs

So we can see there that while the newer designs size more conservatively than some of the older ones, there are also older designs that are just as conservatively sized (and recommend very large anchors as a result). For what it's worth, the anchor actually installed on my boat is a 73 lb Rocna Vulcan, as that was a size bigger than the more conservative of the new gen recommendations. And it fit just fine, so no good reason not to carry slightly more.

 

[High Wire]

We sold our 45# CQR after it pulled out and set us drifting in calm conditions. Winds 5-10, current about a half knot. Sitting eating dinner when the anchor drag alarm went off. Now the alarm does go off occasionally when it loses track of a satellite or something but we were clearly slowly moving. We had just come back aboard after hours in town. There was no one down current of us to worry about so I just did nothing to see when it would reset. It never did in about a hundred yards. What if we were still on shore? Goodbye CQR. Hello Vulcan.

 

[Nomad Willy]

I think some products get popular kinda sorta by accident. Or for some reason not really related to the product’s performance.

The CQR is skinny and fits well on sailboats. The Claws fit even better on most boats and are still very popular.

Fishermen in SE Alaska use the ForFjord. Another low performance anchor. Why I don’t know. Perhaps they just like things skookum .. some fishermen use studded chain in their anchor rodes. And if they can’t afford a ForFjord they get a big Claw.

The “everybodies” doing it or buying one product makes an popular product even more popular. The new gen anchors became popular for the best of reasons ... they work better. The Rocna worked a bit better at holding and became very popular. But holding power became so great on most new anchors that one could actually size down and still have more holding power than w most older anchors. Being such a conservative lot rec trawler skippers never do that. Now many have seen how well the Australian anchors set and otherwise have excellent ability to do reversals and hang in short scope the boat skipper seems to have it all in modern anchors.

But Claws and Danforths and CQR’s are still seen in large numbers so It’s obvious they perform well enough for many and most get one of those anchors when they buy a boat.

 

[bayview]

I had a CQR years ago. Very limited usefulness. newer anchors with sharp points penetrate grass and hard bottoms better.
That swivel has a short radius so it really does not accommodate boat swings with tide and wind.

 

[rsn48]

I haven't checked out the Rocna propaganda (I own one) but they claim their recommended anchor to boat size recommendations are done taking into account a 50 knot wind. They say some other manufactures size to I believe a 30 knot wind.

The rationale behind our sizing

50-60 knots of wind at Deception Island, Antarctica. Situations such as this influence our sizing attitudes.

Jérôme Poncet's Golden Fleece enduring some 60 knots of South Atlantic fury in South Georgia Island.
Peter, the Rocna designer, comes from a background of world cruising, and we tend to consider gear inadequate if it is not suitable for extreme environments. By this we mean the anchoring scenarios found in high latitudes northern Europe, Greenland, southern New Zealand, Patagonia, Antarctica, et cetera.

Our sizing is conservative, intended to provide an anchor adequate for use in all conditions most boaters would ever endure. We base our calculations on 50 knots wind, associated surge, and soft moderate holding bottoms into which it is assumed the anchor has set. Adequate scope is assumed. This is far in excess of most manufacturers.

Windage and resulting forces is judged based on typical vessel profiles according to LOA and displacement.

Note that tidal flow generally does not generate a hugely significant amount of force and in most areas can be all but disregarded. On a typical 10m (33') yacht, it takes a 6 knot current to generate about as much force as a 20 knot breeze on the same boat.

Naturally there are many variables involved, and in many situations an adequately sized Rocna will easily handle far worse winds than 50 knots. There are others where even a Rocna will not hold well. However, our aim is to consider a realistic poor case scenario as the basis for our recommendations.

 

[rsn48]

Thought I would add this from the same location as above, discussing Rocna sizing:

Other manufacturers' recommendations
There is a tendency amongst anchor manufacturers to recommend sizes smaller than those really required. They invariably suggest very optimistic sizes for impractically light conditions. For example, a certain world-renowned name-brand advises the use of a 20 kg (44 lb) anchor on a heavy cruising yacht of LOA up to 14.8m (49'). This recommendation is far too light when the tested performance of this particular anchor is considered in conjunction with the forces this boat size may be expected to generate. Another brand states that a working anchor should hold "up to 30 knots of wind". In our view, an upper limit of 30 knots wind would make the anchor a very light-weight temporary hook which has no place as the primary bower on any vessel.

The tendency to this misleading advice exists simply because it is thought to make the anchor in question look better in the eyes of the customer – either better performing than the competition, or cheaper, or both. Additionally, a manufacturer producing a number of different 'styles' of anchors, commonly copies, may feel the need to 'position' a particular design in such a way so as to rank it 'correctly'. This distorted logic results in compounded errors and unrealistic sizing.

Over-sizing
Many Rocna customers, in improving their anchor type by switching to a Rocna from an older anchor which they have learned to be unreliable, make doubly sure about their upgrade by also increasing the weight of their anchor. We see this tendency a lot, and try to discourage it. As above, our official sizing is very conservative, and in many cases it's a case of "don't over-size – we already did that for you!"

On a weight-for-weight basis, the Rocna represents a very significant step up from most other types, and doubling the size (for example) could inadvertently cause serious problems with retrieval and other handling issues.

Going over our sizing recommendations could in some cases be justified, for example by the requirement to use very low scopes (short rodes). In this case, a higher angle of pull will be applied to the anchor, necessitating a higher element of dead-weight in the anchor to resist this. As a real world example, Steve Dashew uses a Rocna 110 on his 84' powerboat Wind Horse. Our recommendation for this boat is a Rocna 70. However, Dashew routinely anchors in tight and non-ideal anchorages, and reports his Rocna perfectly secure at scope as low as 2:1.

Dead weight can be required in other circumstances, such as when anchoring on a sea-bed into which the anchor cannot possibly be set (e.g. solid rock, or a very thin layer of sand over coral pan, etc). The anchor then depends solely on its weight in order to generate friction against the bottom.

 

[Arc]

When I see boats with 2 anchors, the CQR is usually not deployed

 

[Nomad Willy]

For sizing looking at anchor tests that put several thousand lbs pull on the rode w anchors about 40lbs should give us strong indications of what to choose in sizes close to what was used in the test.

Obviously if your boat is a size generally requiring one size up or down one could (w an acceptable level of accuracy) choose one size up or down.

Or scale up or down for 10’ as in a 50’ boat 10’ off sizes dictated for a 40’ boat or a 30’ boat. I think the scaling isn’t linear so some interpretation would be required for that too.

But re anchor manufacturers recommendations are open to lots of subjectivity one should only use them if they parallel what is found in big multi-anchor tests that strive to treat each anchor the same. Of course that’s not possible but re anchor testing being close is golden.

The tests I’m talking about above are usually best but it’s been several years since any serious anchor tests have been done. Mantus and the Excel and others (probably) haven’t been tested in a multi-brand reasonably objective tests. However both anchors have been tested on the world-wide dock talk forum and given blessings. However what Steve G did in “Anchor Setting Videos” can be taken quite seriously. But to be more objective one could/should give old guard anchors like the Spade a little more attention than the newer half tested anchors.

 

[Nomad Willy]

Arc,
We’ve all seen that but many here have also seen/experienced stellar performances by CQR anchors.

I for one anchored w two other boats in a small bay/inlet in northern Canadian coast. The other two boats were a KK42 and a 43’ (about) sailboat. The gale blew all night at 50 and more knots.

The KK42 was on a big Bruce and was directly ahead of us. He dragged toward us to the point that I decided to pull my 18lb anchor and reset ahead where the KK started out. I fully expected him to make that move. He didn’t. So I pulled anchor and re-anchored where he started out .. at the mouth of a big stream or small river. River mouths can be troublesome setting anchors per my past experience. However we got a good set and settled in.
The big sailboat was to the right of both of us and he moved slightly forward and re-set. Didn’t talk to him in the morning so I don’t know why he re-set. But I was close enough to see he deployed a big CQR. We didn’t drag and the sailboat didn’t drag through the night.
The KK also didn’t drag after the re-positioning. And in the morning we talked for a minute or so and he said he pulled up a small tree after his drag.

But the sailboat didn’t move that I could tell. And I’m quite sure we experienced 60knot gusts in the dark that night. For us 2hr watches. All we could see was our GPS and two port lights on the sailboat.
So when anybody bad-mouths the CQR I remember that night in Patterson Inlet.

 

[markpierce]

When I see boats with 2 anchors, the CQR is usually not deployed

In my area of the marina (consisting mostly forty-footers), most dual anchors are a claw and a CQR. Am sure that the claw is more commonly used. Purchased a small CQR for my small sailboat (24-foot cutter) in the 1980s, but never used, and instead used a small claw. It was more handy yet effective.

 

[dhays]

For years I used a CQR on my 40’ sailboat. It held really well. It did NOT set well. When I bought my 43’ trawler, it came with a CQR copy. It held well, but was finicky to set. I replaced it with a Sarca Excel. It holds really well, but sets easily.

I still have that CQR sitting in my yard. Free for anyone who wants to take it.

 

[Peter B]

For years I used a CQR on my 40’ sailboat. It held really well. It did NOT set well. When I bought my 43’ trawler, it came with a CQR copy. It held well, but was finicky to set. I replaced it with a Sarca Excel. It holds really well, but sets easily.

I still have that CQR sitting in my yard. Free for anyone who wants to take it.

I thing re the CQR type of anchor, this is the situation. If they do set well, then they hold well. The issue is that they are tricky to set compared to the new gen. anchors, and they do not handle weedy bottoms at all well. So, they have been, and for some still are, quite good anchors in the right bottoms and with folk used to their foibles. However, if you can get a new anchor that is less demanding to set, and sets well and quickly first try virtually every time...AND has great holding power, why would you not do that..?

 

[FF]

In selecting an anchor I work backwards , what can my windlass or capstan lift ?

Since it is doing the work a modern watch fob is of no interest.

For our 1 story tall launch a 60# CQR , a 60# Bruce and a 60H# Danforth are carried as bow anchors.
A 20H Danforth works for the stern
A 12H Danforth is the bow anchor for waiting for the few bridges we cant slip under.

The same basic technique sets them all.

 

[menzies]

We have both a CQR and a claw on the bow. We use the CQR and in the past five years it has never let us down - and we have been caught in some serious blows. In this period it only gave us a setting issue once in the grassy bottom off New Plymouth. It set and held on the third attempt.

The one time we did decide to lift and go was in Double Breasted where we were the boat to windward in a tight snchorage when a nasty front came in. We got out of dodge and put the island between us and the storm. I would have done the same with any anchor down.

I did read in a previous post on this thread that one issue with the CQR is it it not "pointy." Not sure I agree with that - our 75# CQR below after being regalvanized at the beginning of last year.

 

[mvweebles]

This is settled science. With few exceptions, every credible anchor test I've seen for several years reveal the new-style 'scoop' anchors are superior to older styles. The exceptions are Danforth-style that still do well in mud and sand; and some sort of hook-anchor for rocky bottoms.

Surprised no one has mentioned the CQR style has a long shank that does not always fit well between the bow roller and the windlass on many boats.

Peter

 

[menzies]

This is settled science. With few exceptions, every credible anchor test I've seen for several years reveal the new-style 'scoop' anchors are superior to older styles. The exceptions are Danforth-style that still do well in mud and sand; and some sort of hook-anchor for rocky bottoms.

Surprised no one has mentioned the CQR style has a long shank that does not always fit well between the bow roller and the windlass on many boats.

Peter

I guess the issue is the same as with all technologies. Just because the next one along is "better" do you throw out thousands of dollars worth of equipment to upgrade. Then when the next generation comes along where the "science" proves it better do you cycle again?

 

[rslifkin]

I guess the issue is the same as with all technologies. Just because the next one along is "better" do you throw out thousands of dollars worth of equipment to upgrade. Then when the next generation comes along where the "science" proves it better do you cycle again?

It depends on how well your current stuff is working and if you were looking to add another to the collection anyway. But if you're already looking to buy something, then going for the better version is a no-brainer.

 

[Nomad Willy]

Wonder if anyone has ever tried welding the hinge up?
But CQR went to a bit of trouble/expense adding that as a feature.
I only have vague ideas as to how it’s a benefit. It must allow/cause the fluke tip to press against the seafloor where otherwise it would not. Or keep side loads from breaking the extra long shank. Or facilitate veering w/o un-setting the anchor. It’s unique so perhaps the reason for it’s existence is also unique.

Any other theories or does somebody really know how it was designed to work? Somebody must know as there’s so many sailboaters here.