Anchor Chain Weight

That sounds good enough to me, just adding 'high holding power, quick setting' to the anchor definition. But 2 full back up systems seem quite a bit. Just one should be enough, I'd say. Perhaps also having an extra special anchor for hard grounds.

Cheers.

 

would a grapnel-hook style work better for hard grounds, or is there something else I should be looking for there. I was envisioning something a bit similar to a grapnel-hook used for climbing (or, on an even-smaller scale, a treble-hook...with 4 prongs...used for fishing), but with tines that are still angled a bit away from the center shaft at the tips, to allow better purchase from a "resting on the top" angle, so that it would be a bit more rapidly settable.

As far as a "good" bottom conditions anchor, I'm considering an articulating anchor with 2 tines (though I keep wanting to call them spades...since ther ARE for digging, lol)

 

I'm quite happy with my stowable 30 pounds fisherman style anchor, allowing me to handle rocky, garvel or hard bottoms plus heavily weedy ones. Bulwagga is also said to work well on such bottoms.

When in soft bottoms I prefer to deploy a CQR (which I'm planning to switch for a more modern plow type one) and use this fisherman anchor only as a lunch hook (light for my boat's displacement).

Have a look at:
http://www.peluke.com/Storm_Anchors/storm_anchors.html
http://www.noteco.com/bulwagga/

Cheers.

 

thanks, there were some links to magazine articles on the bulwagga page that gave me a lot to think about...gonna put some further study in there!