WESTERLY has a winch, 40' of 5/16" HT chain, and 300' of 1/4" stainless steel cable.
It's what the boat came with when I bought it 20 years ago.
I have found the winch to be very serviceable, and the rode works well, although it is more like a line/chain combo in the swinging area needed. It has a pawl that keeps the drum from moving, if the winch were to fail holding the rode, the bow would probably be gone along with the winch.
In my towing days, we had a carpenter's clamp for emergency purposes (tow machine brake band failure, etc) that clamped around the wire rope. But I've seen one of these explode when exposed to dynamic pressure. We had special precautions to keep the crew safe when one of these was in service.
The best answer for increasing the ability of the rode to safely weather high strains, is to increase scope. As FF mentioned, a kellet can be helpful, as long as the winch is strong enough to handle retreival. If you are rigged appropriately, kellets can be retrieved separately.
WESTERLY's solution for extreme weather conditions is to replace the SS cable rode with a 3/4" nylon line (435') that is available at the winch. Just takes a minute or two to change out the shackles, this almost doubles the available safe working load of the assembly, and provides much needed dynamic surge capacity. When deployed, it is still made fast to the winch. Done this twice in the last 20 years, may have been un-needed both times.