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Old 07-11-2012, 05:50 PM   #28
Marin
Scraping Paint
 
City: -
Join Date: Oct 2007
Posts: 13,745
Our Bruce was not self-deploying because of the angle of the boat pulpit, the depth of the bronze channel that comprises the backbone of the pulpit, and angle at which the chain went back to the windlass wildcat, which was straight back down the pulpit channel. As opposed to the photos from FlyWright and others where the pulpit is more level and the chain slants up from the pulpit and thus holds the anchor "nose down" in a position where it is inclined to slide forward when the rode is slacked off. On our boat, the Bruce lay back with its shank right down in the bottom of the bronze pulpit channel. So deploying it required it to be pushed forward a bit. It wasn't a problem, it wasn't inconvenient, and it played no role in our decision to get rid of the anchor a few years later.

But the Rocna on the same pulpit with the wildcat of the new windlass at the same height as the old windlass balances quite differently than the Bruce. This was apparently a design decision on the part of Peter Smith, and the result is that the anchor starts to deploy the moment the rode starts to feed out, even on our boat with its angled-up pulpit and straight-back chain angle. It's a nice feature and we prefer it to what we had before with the Bruce.

When we bought the boat it has a big Danforth knock-off on the pulpit (which was a good choice for the boat's previous home of SFO Bay), and while we replaced it within two days of getting the boat to Bellingham, it wasn't self-deploying either.
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