Mud tests require real mud to determine the value of the anchors tested. For example, a Max anchor was tested in the Cooper River by Charleston, SC and it was determined to have penetrated 48 feet of mud bringing up gravel off the bottom under the mud. In the Chesapeake Bay, virtually all areas have mud, good and thick mud, deep mud. Mississippi Sound has good deep mud where testers from ABS have found good test results.

A test with an anchor windlass capable of pulling 4000 pounds should have pulled each anchor to its maximum holding power, not just 500 pounds.

When an anchor manufacturer recommends certain settings for holding in mud, the testers should honor those recommendations and use the settings for mud as recommended as well as the scopes recommended. Your testers did not appear to have either read the instructions or to have honored them regarding the Super Max anchors.

The testers' conclusions based upon the drop off of pressure on the rodes after initial setting is also erroneous, for they failed to consider the effect of either momentum on the part of the anchor after drawing had stopped, which in the case of the Super Max anchors could cause the anchor to continue its forward progress for another one or two inches, or from the effect of creeping by the anchor whose property is to penetrate deeply and which does so when pressures are applied to the anchor and its rode. In these tests the anchors were performing as they were intended to do, digging deeper. In real mud the Max and Super Max anchors will penetrate many feet of mud to find a denser bottom and the result is a very slow creeping until the harder bottom is found. If the testers had again applied pressure to these Super Max anchors, they would have found them to have gone back to the 500 pounds as reported before and much, much more if they had gone on up to 4000 pounds.

I hope you will publish this rebuttal to your mud anchor tests as you have seriously misled your readers with the conclusions reached.