| | | forth performs well under a variety of conditions but slips in soft mud at short scopes. DAVIS TALON XT The Talon XT from Davis Anchor is a plow-style anchor available in eight sizes in either galvanized or stainless steel. The Talon XT performed equally at both the long and short scope. It set right away both times and hit 500 pounds after pulling 10 feet of line at the short scope and 15 feet of line at the long scope. Holding power was rated 450 pounds at both scopes, high on our list. Our test anchor was a galvanized X35 model weighing in at 36 pounds; it cost $275 and has lifetime warranty against breakage. Bottom Line: Good holding | | power at both scopes and a top-shelf warranty put the Talon XT in with the leaders. FORTRESS FX-23 Fortress builds aluminum Dan-forth-style, twin-fluke anchors that are significantly lighter in weight than their comparably sized steel competitors. We tested an FX-23. This anchor has a bright-anodized finish. Assembly is required prior to use; however, it took only a few minutes to put together, and the fact that the anchor can be disassembled means less storage space is needed should the anchor be stowed long-term. Mud palms, a small aluminum plate that bolts to the crown of the anchor, are standard equipment on all Fortress anchors. Fortress claims | | the mud palms make the anchor set faster in any type of bottom and recommends they be permanently installed. We installed them on the FX-23. One other feature found only on the FX-series is an adjustable fluke angle; it can be changed from the standard 32 degrees to 45 degrees to provide more holding power. Fortress recommends using only the 45-degree position in soft mud bottoms with very poor holding power as the anchor will not set in firmer bottoms when in the 45-degree position. They recommend keeping the anchor in the standard 32-degree position until extra holding power is needed. We tested in the standard 32-degree position, but we will be following up on the design's performance in the 45-degree configuration. | | |
| | | | | and the winch started cranking. Our goal here was not to apply maximum pressure but rather to apply a reasonable load, in our case 500 pounds, and then see whether the anchor would maintain its hold in the soft mud once the rode was stopped. If an anchor jacked itself right into the mud, we rated it Excellent for setting. If it set in less than a 5-foot pull, we rated it Good. Anchors that took multiple attempts to set were rated Fair, and had any failed to set, we would have rated them Poor. When applying pressure with the winch we tried to hit 500 pounds. Some anchors hit it right away, some took a longer pull to do it, and some never hit 500. Once an anchor hit 500 or we reached the length limit of our pull, we'd stop the winch and watch the dyno. Some anchors held firm, some slowly let off pressure, while others fell off fast. We noted this in each text section, too. We also noted approximately how far an anchor dragged during the test. | | |
| | | firmed the bottom composition to be soft mud with a sprinkling of small shells. To control as many variables as possible, we decided to revert to our proven test protocol of using a winch onshore to apply pressure to the anchor rode. Our 12-volt DC-powered 4,000-pound winch was mounted on a wooden frame positioned in the back of a pickup truck near a seawall on Test Day 1, and on a large marine dock area on Test Day 2. About 20 feet of cable was pulled off the winch and attached to a Dillon dynamometer, which was in turn connected via shackle and hook to the anchor rode. The rode consisted of 5/8-inch eight-plait anchor rope spliced to 10 feet of 3/8-inch chain. Several loops were tied in the rode to provide quick connections to the test gear. Once a set was assured, the rope was connected to the test apparatus | | |