Stu, real-life reports from one person, plus YOUR natural hatred of things you don't believe in, are hardly anough to overcome the thousands of users who have used CQRs for however many years they've been made. I, for one, don't mind if you speak up for the things you like, but it is in bad form to badmouth excessively those things you don't like, and that other people do.:naughty:
I purchased my first genuine CQR in 1971 and anchored all over the world with one on many many boats until 2012. New gen anchor? Pooh, pooh. An anchor is an anchor, right?
If you are familiar with Admiralty Bay, Bequia, there are these chutes where no anchor seems to hold well. People are always anchoring there because that's where the big spaces are to anchor, when it's crowded. We call anchoring in Bequia 'the drag fest' and I assure you it has
nothing to do with guys in dresses. One day a guy came in and dropped his pick in one of these chutes, but amazingly we did not get the show we expected. We didn't get a show because he stayed put, so I hopped in the dinghy and asked him what anchor he was using. He replied, "Rocna."
I began reading about them and asking other Rocna owners about their experiences with these "new gen" anchors. Not one owner had a bad word to say, until the Chinese fabrication fiasco. As that situation was remedied, I felt Rocnas were definitely
the anchor to have, but my genuine CQR was just fine because the Rocna @ $1500 was a bit beyond my budget right then. However, as sometimes happens, Neptune decided to intervene and we were able to pick up an 88# Rocna for only $300.00. Heck, at that price it could be a grand experiment at little loss, even if the anchor was crap.
One year later, after diving on the Rocna at almost every set (we are full time liveaboards who live exclusively on the hook), we were certain that there was really something to this "new gen" anchor thing. Rarely did this anchor not set within one anchor length and it has
never,
ever dragged significantly, even in some of the most notoriously bad anchorages in the Windward and Leeward Islands.
So now, after something over 1800 nights in a whole lot of Caribbean anchorages on that Rocna, the "thousands of users who have used CQRs for however many years they've been made" you mentioned, may love their genuine CQR's (as I did for a whole lot of years), but the genuine CQR anchors are without a doubt inferior anchors and do
not do the job they were designed to do as well as the equivalent Rocna anchor,
period.
And to add insult to injury, it is almost impossible to sell a used genuine CQR these days for any reasonable amount of money. They are a dime a dozen down here because nobody wants them, even as a second anchor..