Soon after we bought Madrone, we swapped the CQR anchor that came with the boat (actually a knock-off – it was probably built in the Ta Shing boatyard) for a Spade anchor. So far, the Spade has performed like a champ, setting reliably and holding strongly in the wide variety of bottom types and anchoring conditions we’ve seen over our time cruising.
About the only thing that is not great about the Spade is the galvanizing. It’s applied very thinly and abrades off quickly, and then of course the underlying steel starts to rust. Our solution to that is just to keep it painted – about once a year or so we slap on a couple of coats of epoxy paint – and that does the trick.
