Review: Tornado Anchor

An anchor is one of those things that folks don’t appreciate much. It’s just a hunk of metal, right? How complicated could it be? But it’s not until that hunk of metal fails that you really learn to appreciate a functional one. After all, a day on the water is supposed to be relaxing, so a slipping and dragging anchor is the last thing you want to deal with.

Surprisingly, there are actually a handful of anchor shapes and sizes to choose from. There are mushroom anchors, cube anchors, spike anchors, and pyramid anchors. Generally, these have been the only options on the market—and are, for all intents and purposes, hunks of metal. That is, until the Tornado Anchor hit the market. The Tornado is different than the rest because it has a dynamic “spin” system: it’s constructed out of a series of stacked rectangular plates that can each spin freely from each other. That allows the anchor to contour to the river bottom, creating more points of contact across varying surfaces. That all translates to an anchor that stops your boat faster and keeps the anchor dug in while you do what you need to do.

The Tornado comes in a variety of weights to suit the needs of river crafts of most any size. I went with the 30-pound anchor for my 13.5-foot raft, which has worked great, even when loaded to the brim on a long river trip. I find that when I drop anchor, I’m grabbing onto the bottom almost instantly—whether it’s rocky, sandy, or even smooth, algae-covered rocks. As an avid angler, I’m catching more fish thanks to the anchor’s ability to hold me firmly in nice, big holes. Ultimately, that’s the purpose of a hunk of metal, right?

$180; available at tornadoanchorusa.com.