One of the (many) things you should never scrimp on, in our opinion, is the ground tackle. When we bought her, Nalu had a Spade 30kg which we thought was ‘not oversized’. I had read in the Amel Email Group that a Rocna 40 would fit just fine on the Super Maramu, so we ordered one through the shipyard to install it when we’d be back in Greece. Fingers crossed it would actually fit!
When we arrived at Karlovasi shipyard, one of the first things we did was go look at our anchor. And wow, that really is a big anchor! Would it actually fit on our bow roller? We weren’t 100% sure …
Oh shit – it doesn’t fit!
While her Spade anchor was fairly old, she came with a new anchor chain so all we had to do was switch the anchors out. We used a temporary shackle for the fitting (we replaced it for a certified stainless steel shackle before using the anchor) and up she went! We were really hoping it would be a nice fit – but it wasn’t. The shank couldn’t quite fit and the anchor got stuck about 3-4cm before being fully docked 🙁
Grinding away some polyester
Clearly, we had to grind away some of the polyester, so Martijn went to hunt down a tool for this job. That wasn’t as easy as you’d think, being on a shipyard, but he found something and started grinding.
It took a little bit of doing – trying to see if the anchor would come all the way home, grind away some more, fit again – you get the idea. After grinding away just enough of the polyester (both on the front and back, see photo) our brand new Rocna 40 finally fit!
So, does the Rocna 40 fit on a Super Maramu ..?
Short answer: probably, but you may need to do a little grinding or make some other adjustments.
If you take a good look at the photo of Martijn grinding away the polyester, you can see there was just enough polyester there, right below the metal plate, to get grind away and get a nice fit. Not all bow rollers are the same on all Super Maramus, so we have no way of knowing if the Rocna 40 (can be made to) fit another Super Maramu.
But if you’re onboard or close to your boat, you can make a mockup (Rocna provides a full scale pattern) and see how well the anchor would fit your Amel. You can find the pattern on this page, that has all the dimensions listed as well – just scroll down the page for the patterns.
How happy are we with our Rocna 40?
Very happy! We left the shipyard and Karlovasi a few days later, to anchor at Ormos Marathokampou, next to the local marina. For at least 24 hours, we had gusts of over 30 knots of wind, and we stayed in place perfectly – using a scope of 5:1. It’s also very easy to set a Rocna, as we had learned on previous boats we used Rocna anchors with. So no regrets here!
Admittedly, a Rocna 33 would probably also be fine with a Super Maramu, but both the anchor winch and bow roller can handle the bigger 40, so why use a smaller anchor? We personally sleep better knowing we have a properly set, oversized Rocna holding our boat – our home!- in place and off the rocks. But in the end, we all have to make our own choices for our own boats, so please do what you think is best, not what somebody else prefers 😉
Nalu happily anchored – using our new Rocna 40 🙂
