Anchor Pulpit Project

I am sharing my project to upgrade my whole anchor setup. Currently the boat has a anchor roller mounted directly on the bow and had a smooth drum windlass that requires tailing it and can only handle rope rode.

I wanted to install a heavier anchor a little further out with a windlass at the same height so I started looking at pre-manufactured anchor platforms/pulpits. After realizing that I would be modifying anything I bought to bring the platform down to the deck height near the current windlass, I decided to find a used pulpit and just hack it up.

This platform came off a 30’ sea ray and was about 4' long. I want it longer so I had plants of room to extend it inboard to the deck with plenty of room for the windlass and cleats. I needed to be refinished anyway and was cheap so I can chop it up with impunity.

So far I have chopped it apart and traced it 13” apart, beveled the edges from below and made a simple for from sheet aluminum. After it is tabbed together, it will be ground down and glasses across the top, reenforced from below and then take it down to the boat and do some CAD work (cardboard aided design) to figure out the shape of the sides which will extend down to the deck.

About 6 layers of mat to tab it together. The overlapping layers will go much further out once I can remove the bracing

Mat doesn’t have a lot of strength. I would use a structural glass like 1708. It is a biaxial glass with a layer of mat.

Comodave said:

Mat doesn’t have a lot of strength. I would use a structural glass like 1708. It is a biaxial glass with a layer of mat.

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Thank you for the tip, I am using mat for this first part to build up the middle thickness to account for the or beveled edges of the cut two pieces of the platform. Once I have it closer to even and the fasteners out of the way, I will grind the gel coat further back and run either 1708 or alternating layers of mat and woven roving.

I agree about the matte only. Nytex which encompasses both mat and cloth is far stronger. You will need the strength.

Which ever windlass you use, the chain wildcat needs to be ABOVE the chain feed or the chain WILL tend to pop out of the pockets which aside from being disconcerting, may be dangerous.

If you do mount the windlass so the wildcat is below the chain feed you likely will have to use another wheel to push it down to ensure it stays in the pockets.
Without enough chain/wildcat engagement it WILL pop free.

C lectric said:

I agree about the matte only. Nytex which encompasses both mat and cloth is far stronger. You will need the strength.

Which ever windlass you use, the chain wildcat needs to be ABOVE the chain feed or the chain WILL tend to pop out of the pockets which aside from being disconcerting, may be dangerous.

If you do mount the windlass so the wildcat is below the chain feed you likely will have to use another wheel to push it down to ensure it stays in the pockets.
Without enough chain/wildcat engagement it WILL pop free.

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The windlass will be above the feed, I am basically replicating this setup, which is the mainship MK3. Mine will be a little shorter and the platform will have to extend down at the aft and where on the MK3, the deck was molded to come up to the gunnel hight at the platform.

I just pulled the braces off and will probably trim it up and take it down for mock up so the additional layers of glass will extent all the way down in continuous cloth.

Woven roving leaves pockets of resin. Most builders used to use it to build up thickness but the biaxial cloth is stronger and doesn’t leave pockets of resin which doesn’t have any strength.

You might consider a polished stainless steel plate backplated along the entire length on the top to provide the strength required of an extended anchor pulpit.

Be sure to template/trial your anchor before final installation. Horizontal Winches are more forgiving as long as they have sufficient gypsy wrap before chain enters locker. Vertical capstan with short pulpit & long anchor shank is a bad combo.

Flatswing said:

Be sure to template/trial your anchor before final installation. Horizontal Winches are more forgiving as long as they have sufficient gypsy wrap before chain enters locker. Vertical capstan with short pulpit & long anchor shank is a bad combo.

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I am waiting on the backordered anchor to arrive but will definitely test fit prior to taking to the boat. I will probably need to trim some glass in front of the roller. I am using the same model horizontal lewmar profish windlass that is pictured on the MK3 above.

Nice improvement to your boat. Well done. Luckily nobody has asked what type of anchor you have on order. I’m sure it’s the wrong one.

HopCar said:

Nice improvement to your boat. Well done. Luckily nobody has asked what type of anchor you have on order. I’m sure it’s the wrong one.

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Shocking indeed

I have added 3 6 oz mat layers on top of the platform now, bridging the beveled holes from the previous installation. It is extended down on each side. I clamped a form on either side once the glass was wetted out to create a relatively straight and even surface to apply the additional layers to from underneath. I would like to retain the (roughly) original width and height of the finished of the gel coat at the front of the pulpit, so I only have the thickness of glass that I ground away from the top. I removed about 1/8" of glass from the top so I have that thickness to work with.

The shorter overhang will be trimmed off and the longer overhang can be cut with tin snips at the boat to the contour of the deck, then I'll bring it back to the shop and build it up. I'll sand the surface and sides to a even finish and then wrap it in one layer of 1708, the vast majority of structure will be added to the bottom side where I have virtually no physical limit to how many layers I want to add. Once is is all done, I'll remove the hardware and refinish the whole thing, it will be gelcoat with a non-skid surface on top. The gel coat will be applied with foam brushes.

It never occurred to me to repurpose an anchor pulpit from another boat! I just built a mount out of multiple layers of marine ply laminated with epoxy and fitted & glassed it to the shape of the boat to get the height of the gypsy above the chain. Your solution was probably easier and looks more professional.

After looking at all of the glass work pictures, I take back the part I said about your job being easier but it does look more professional!

The dimensions of this example are totally different but I plan to install an access port just like this example. That way I can reach the backside and secure some hardware to the pulpit rather than through the deck. The pulpit will be secured to the deck with 6 carriage bolts, spread over a larger area than each individual cleat would be bolted, so it will plenty secure.

There will be a tube inside to guide the rode to the locker but I am probably going to relocate my wash down hose under the pulpit, eventually, I'd like to add a fixed spray nozzle to the bottom, near the roller, so I can open a valve, flip on the salt water wash down pump and clean the chain remotely as I retrieve the rode.

boomerang said:

It never occurred to me to repurpose an anchor pulpit from another boat! I just built a mount out of multiple layers of marine ply laminated with epoxy and fitted & glassed it to the shape of the boat to get the height of the gypsy above the chain. Your solution was probably easier and looks more professional.

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I considered the marine ply approach and it would definitely work but honestly, I have some re-coring projects ahead of me on this boat and I just didn't want to add any more plywood.

If I was smart, I would have just used a captive style drum windlass like all of the charter boats run, they are really straightforward, keep the stinky rode out of the bilge (my chain locker does not drain overboard) and are pretty robust but I don't care for the look of them.

boomerang said:

After looking at all of the glass work pictures, I take back the part I said about your job being easier but it does look more professional!

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By the way, congrats on all of your progress on Yellowbird. I'm pretty sure I recall seeing your boat in it's lowest days on craiglist before you got your hands on it and fixed her up. It looks great.

Gdavid said:

By the way, congrats on all of your progress on Yellowbird. I'm pretty sure I recall seeing your boat in it's lowest days on craiglist before you got your hands on it and fixed her up. It looks great.

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Thank you. Yep, that's where my wife found her, on Craigslist. It was ,indeed, in some of her lowest days when we got her! We view it as a piece of clay. We have enjoy making it into what we want. Kind of like your pulpit project, it's fun to get creative and then enjoy the fruits of your labor...lots of labor in our case!

I haven't updated this thread in forever due to the slow progress but it is coming along. I am determined to finish this and mount it prior to launching the boat this spring. The outside is wrapped in 1708 biaxial cloth and I will be using multiple layers from the underside with will be hidden.

In hindsight, I probably should just built a mold and laid it up in a conventional fashion, instead I have essentially used the original platform and the extension of from fiberglass matt as the core and then sandwiched it between 1708 from both above and below. It is a cheap method of construction but labor intensive to get the finish right.

I still have a lot of work left to do.

By the time you are done with it you will be an expert in glass work.

boomerang said:

It never occurred to me to repurpose an anchor pulpit from another boat! .

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LOL I mounted a pulpit from a Bayliner to my old Mainship I. It fit perfectly using 4 bolts and a backing plate and held the boat while anchored thru many thunderstorms.
(Actually, it was from a partially sunken Bayliner)
I had a railing added to the existing railing and it looked like it came from the factory that way.

Gdavid said:

The dimensions of this example are totally different but I plan to install an access port just like this example. That way I can reach the backside and secure some hardware to the pulpit rather than through the deck. The pulpit will be secured to the deck with 6 carriage bolts, spread over a larger area than each individual cleat would be bolted, so it will plenty secure.

There will be a tube inside to guide the rode to the locker but I am probably going to relocate my wash down hose under the pulpit, eventually, I'd like to add a fixed spray nozzle to the bottom, near the roller, so I can open a valve, flip on the salt water wash down pump and clean the chain remotely as I retrieve the rode.

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Would love for you to do a post if you install a fixed spray nozzle. I've been wanting to do this for a long time. Mainly I'd like to find the nozzle to use. I saw one trawler that had two nozzles under the pulpit. They looked like a fire hose nozzle that was flexible/aimable

Mac2 said:

Would love for you to do a post if you install a fixed spray nozzle. I've been wanting to do this for a long time. Mainly I'd like to find the nozzle to use. I saw one trawler that had two nozzles under the pulpit. They looked like a fire hose nozzle that was flexible/aimable

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I haven't figured out the details yet but the plan is to glass in a PVC chase on either side of the pulpit and I will run copper tubing through these with a removable nozzle on each side, it will take some trial and error to find a nozzle effective for a relatively low flow and easy to service for sediment/corrosion from raw water. The copper tubing will allow me to manually adjust for the right angle while trying to say out of harm's way. i am sure I will mangle a few before I get it dialed in but they should be easy to replace.

Gdavid said:

I haven't figured out the details yet but the plan is to glass in a PVC chase on either side of the pulpit and I will run copper tubing through these with a removable nozzle on each side, it will take some trial and error to find a nozzle effective for a relatively low flow and easy to service for sediment/corrosion from raw water. The copper tubing will allow me to manually adjust for the right angle while trying to say out of harm's way. i am sure I will mangle a few before I get it dialed in but they should be easy to replace.

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Sounds like a good plan. The boat I saw had drilled through the hull/anchor locker area to mount the nozzles outside the hull under the bow pulpit. I was also thinking about attaching two high pressure wash down tubes to the side of my pulpit. I already have the outlet on the bow I use as a wash down. I would prefer the dual washdown spread to clean the chain more efficiently.

I mounted the windlass and mocked it up with the anchor in place so I could check the roller positioning. I ended up adding a second roller to keep the chain from rubbing on the pulpit.

How'd you do the second roller? I've been thinking of that modification for my pulpit in place of the metal wear plate I have now.

Also, consider adding a metal plate directly under the shank. With my Vulcan pulled up into a similar through-pulpit roller I found it necessary. When dropping the anchor, the shank falls and hits the pulpit in the split-second before the anchor starts to drop off the roller. Without the plate, it would have beaten up the top of the pulpit. In your case, the second roller might be enough to catch the shank, but I'd suggest testing for it.

rslifkin said:

How'd you do the second roller? I've been thinking of that modification for my pulpit in place of the metal wear plate I have now.

Also, consider adding a metal plate directly under the shank. With my Vulcan pulled up into a similar through-pulpit roller I found it necessary. When dropping the anchor, the shank falls and hits the pulpit in the split-second before the anchor starts to drop off the roller. Without the plate, it would have beaten up the top of the pulpit. In your case, the second roller might be enough to catch the shank, but I'd suggest testing for it.

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The yellow roller is mounted on a 3/8" bolt with a bronze bushing for the roller to roll. The bolt is mounted as high as possible in the stainless steel insert which can only be accessed when the insert is removed from the platform. I had to notch out the fiberglass in the for head of the bolt and nut of the bolt.

I'm planning to mount a section of starboard or cutting board material to the top of the platform to prevent the shank from tearing it up, something sacrificial. I'm also planning to mount my two bow cleats just forward of the windlass and as far apart as I can.

The white gel coat is not the final finish, I have additional fairing to do on the front and outer edge but I wanted to get the top smooth enough to at least temporarily mount the windlass so I would could establish where the rode will be falling down through the deck and into the locker. I am just using a piece of 3" pvc pipe to guide the rode and prevent it from catching on the edge of the deck as it passes through the cavity under the platform and above the deck. I'll try and get the final gel color matched to some degree.

Next step will be to take it back to the boat and trim the bottom and sides to meet the deck and gunnel evenly, then I'm adding more reinforcement to the underside and glassing in the wash down chases. The fiberglass is roughly 1/2' thick now and not too cumbersome when stripped of the hardware and windlass, I don't want it any heavier than necessary as I'm trying to mock it up on the boat and mark it up for trimming.