So they went from "roll bars are where it's at" to just trying to upgrade the Spade.
Has there been any so called independent testing of the Vulcan? The shank is indeed very impressive and I'm speaking mostly of the I beam cross section and quality look.
Eric... For the umpteenth time, Rocna has not "gone from rollbars to an upgraded Spade." The rollbar anchor is still their primary product. They came out with the Vulcan because they recognize a market opportunity when they see one.
The majority of recreational boats have pulpits that can take a rollbar or any other kind of anchor. But there is a significant enough number of production boats like Bayliner/Meridian that for whatever reason have slotted pulpits which limits the types of anchors they can carry easily and neatly. It's a large enough market that Rocna decided to try to grab some of it -- designing and producing an anchor is probably less challenging and expensive than designing and making a car bumper so it's not like coming out with a new anchor is much of an investment on the part of the anchor manufacturer especially now that Rocna is just a tiny division of Canada (Pacific) Metals-- so they cranked out the Vulcan design based on basic design principles that work and put it into production.
And voila, a new product that fits the slotted pulpits on things like Bayliners and whatnot that carries the already respected and well-known Rocna name. Instant positive perception in a world where perception is 75% of everything.
Nowhere do they say the Vulcan represents an improvement in performance over their rollbar anchor. They say they're good, of course--what else would they say?
I suspect that were it not for the sales opportunity represented by the slotted pulpit folks, Rocna never would have bothered with the Vulcan. As I said, they're smart folks who don't let a chance to make another buck pass them by.
And the Vulcan may be a good anchor. It probably is. But like most other anchor types, it's just another "drop, drag, and hope" anchor as I call them, as opposed to the rollbar types' pro-active design that forces the anchor to dig in and begin to set the monent you pull on the rode. Which is why we bought one.
As an aside, here's an example of the power of consumer ego and image at work and how it can greatly benefit companies that sell consumer products. We were in Fisheries the other weekend for some nuts and bolts and passed their anchor display. Mostly Rocnas, as you say. But most of them are polished stainless-- you can even buy an expensive black "protection bag" to put over it so it won't get scratched out on the pulpit.
They had a Rocna 20, same model we have, on display but in polished stainless. Now when we bought ours, a Plain Jane galvanized model, Rocnas were very new to North America. We were told we bought the first one sold to the PNW. And they were expensive. We paid about $1,000 for ours.
Since then production costs have come down, due in no small part from moving its manufacture from New Zealand and Vancouver, BC to China. So a galvanized Rocna 20 costs significantly less today than when we bought ours. I believe they're in the neighborhood of five or six hundred dollars today, maybe less.
But the price of the polished stainless Rocna 20 at Fisheries is..... over $2,000. Given the cost of manufacturing and polishing a stainless anchor-- a job done entirely by machine-- Rocna (and all the other anchor manufacturers who do exactly the same thing) are undoubtedly roaring with laughter all the way to the bank and back.
Which is why creating the Vulcan anchor was probably done in a day using petty cash.