An old girlfriend just called.....

[CapnK]

I'll have to double check, but I think that maybe my "Oh Sh*t!" anchor is a Spade. It's a 45#'er that a catamaran guy left here when he slightly bent the shank trying to get his boat off of the island he'd run up on***. I use it for them storms what have Names, which is why I named it what I did. :D

***Took SeaTow near 2 months to get him off again. He timed it just right, ran waayyy up on the beach during the highest point of a King Tide, and, adding insult to injury, there were also northerly winds which push even more water up into the Bay... DOH!

[Frank]

Quite the way to secure your vessel... would definitely work.

I've looked at tests and these seem a good anchor. They are rudely expensive!
Don't know anyone with one tho... that may be partly due to their price..

[Norman]

Frank, in the lighter weights, aluminum anchors perform poorly on hard bottoms.

I had the smallest real Danforth on my Neptune 16, and it worked great in the sandy, mucky Potomac River, but on the tidally scoured Indian River inlet, just slid along the bottom.

The water was shallow, my son waded to the anchor and stood on the end of the flukes while I jerked the rode. eventually, it started to dig in, and we had a good set,  In deeper water, that would have been impossible.

The question is now in your area of expertise, do you have smooth, hard bottoms where you anchor?  Pebbly bottoms will have this problem too.

[Frank]

Thanks Norman..
The design has weight added to the point underneath.....
The physical size of the anchor seems right
I just can't get my head around "10 lbs"..
I'm sure your right in that it's simply not heavy enough to dig in a hard bottom.

[s/v necessity]

I'm guessing that if you are looking to go with a 10# anchor, then it's probably pretty good (for 10 lbs!).  S/V Panope on youtube has some great videos showing various anchors setting and I think he has reviewed both the aluminum and steel models (comparable sizes, but different materials and weights)