Anchor Mounting on Bow

I have a 21lb SUPER SARCA anchor that I have chosen to be by Bower for the foreseeable future. It's a great anchor but it's awkward to handle. One would think w it's typical shank and short length it would be easy. But the large dia. roll bar and wide fluke it presents some challenges for mounting, and deploying and retrieving.

Anchoring works fairly well on the bow but it's vulnerable to being a part time bumper and the ever present threat of doing damage to the boat itself is there in the bow. I have a plan. Well not exactly MY plan but the plan a friend applied to his very similar Willard boat.

Thought I'd pass it by and see what TF thinks of it.

Picture #1 and 2 show how high the SS rides on my bow roller. And it has the look of something about to "get" anybody that comes near. And if I did hit something damage to the boat's bow would be likely. And not lastly it's too much in the fwd view and I'm very interested in good visibility.

Picture #3, 4 and 5 Is the bow of my friends boat. He took most all the teak off his boat and glassed over everything. He's fairly good at glassing and w good paint it would be quite good looking. I'm contemplating doing much the same w Willy .... just in the bow. I like that he retained about 2" of hull material at the top of his bow. For me to do that would introduce a problem on retrival when I've got a few inches of shank onboard. The shank will want to stick up close to vertical and I'd be wanting to pull it through basically a horizontal .. hole.

An option would be to cut a big "V" in the bow starting at deck level and terminating at the cap rail bottom surface. Then I could put a strap/plate of metal across the top. But the top is not flat so may need some serious fab forming.

Or I could leave the "V" open. Would the top of the bow/hull be strong enough? May be considerably easier to handle the anchor w the bow top open.

Eric, the angle may come from a combination of the up angled fabrication housing the roller, and the windlass being set lower on the foredeck so the pull on the shank angles the anchor high fwd,and low aft.
On my IG the windlass platform was in the same plane as the anchor bowsprit, the chain ran flat, the anchor and windlass virtually aligned. Can you raise the windlass? The enclosed IG platform doubled as a locker, but I`ve seen IGs where it`s an open platform with pipe supports under it.
If you ease the chain, will it sit better and stay there, or will it bounce about. If it`s horizontal it will look better and present a flat surface fwd.
BTW, I`m about to buy an Excel and sell the SS which doesn`t fit the Integrity.

Eric, you could just have a vertical slot. No need for a V. OA's came this way, SS with right angles , so easy to fab.

I'd either slot the bow like Insequent shows to allow a better roller angle, or build a sort of mini pulpit to allow you to mount the roller at a better angle for easier self-launching. Either one will also keep the top of the rollbar a bit lower, so it's less in your line of sight from the helm.

I would get a welder to add cheek plates (I'm not sure if that is the correct word) to the bow roller so that the cheek plates will come in contact with the anchor fluke and provide lateral stabilization.

If you elect to cut the stem area of the bulwark down, whether vee or vertical slot, and not leave a bit intact at the top like your friend did, a metal strap or weldment bridging the gap could consist of a heavy duty hinge on one side and a pinned locking arrangement on the other side for max flexibility in swapping out the anchor, etc.

Oh good there’s numerous great responses.
I was hoping TF would come through.

Brian w Insequent,
I really like your whole rig. Especially the channel w two rollers to control the pitch attitude of the anchor as it goes from vertical to horizontal. I see that you had a ForFjord anchor on before. Are the rollers different when you switched anchors? It also looks like you’ve got two channels nested together for the Excel.
And thanks for the pictures.

Bruce K,
Got no windlass. You can see in my 2nd pic my capstan just aft of my three big cleats. I can pull from either the bottom or top of the capstan drum by reversing the polarity by swapping wires.

rslifkin,
Mini pulpit? At deck level? With the shank flat on the foredeck the roll bar will probably be low enough. I really dislike pulpits so would need to be really motivated. And a pulpit is so wide I’d either hafta cut up a lot more of the bow or put the pulpit on top ... then for sure there would be a big visibility problem.

Shrew,
First I’ll shop for bow roller channels that may work for me “out of the box”.
“Cheek plates” As in something that will keep the anchor from swinging in it’s roll axis? Right now I’ve got two pieces of wood in the back of the roller channel that do that but need to be improved on.

rgano,
Great idea. The hinge. Hadn’t thought about that.
Right now I need to get my bow up to a float to change anchors. And if I’m going to continue to experiment w anchors the ability to swap when out and about is/would be golden. But my experimenting w anchors may be winding down.
Thanks much for the feed-back.

Re the picture.
A bit dated but for those that think I have a windlass here is my layout w the latest capstan. The center cleat is dedicated for anchor use. Most all my rode is nylon and slides over the anchor cleat.

Nomad Willy said:

Oh good there’s numerous great responses.
I was hoping TF would come through.

Brian w Insequent,
I really like your whole rig. Especially the channel w two rollers to control the pitch attitude of the anchor as it goes from vertical to horizontal. I see that you had a ForFjord anchor on before. Are the rollers different when you switched anchors? It also looks like you’ve got two channels nested together for the Excel.
And thanks for the pictures.

snip

Click to expand...

Eric, no changes to rollers or anything else. All I did was change anchors!

Brian,
Good choice.

In my pictures I see another anchor nest very similar to my plans.

Anybody know what this blue boat is ?
It's very similar to my W30.

You can see where He cut out a hole for the bow roller channel but left some on top just below the cap rail. If they hadn't the N46 would have been the N48.

Looks like the W46 has more bow stem rake than my W30 but the rake isn't incorporated into the topsides above the blue.

Is it an N46?

Eric, Anchor Right make a combination alloy bowsprit and roller system specifically for the Super Sarca. Were you aware of this..?

Heavy Duty Bowsprits - Anchor Right Australia

PeterB,
Yes I’ve seen the one you linked. It’s too short. But since it’s specifically for the SS I should get it and have a shop weld on an extension. Thanks for the reminder.
It looks like they may make it in various lengths .. I’ll check w Ground Tackle Marine in Canada.

How’s your summer? We’re in a wet spell ... weeks of rain and 39-42 degrees.

Comodave,
As far as I know.
I was joking about the N46. But if it isn’t the joke’s in me.

Good, glad you're looking into that bowsprit/roller thing. Getting it extended would not be hard, but it looks like they have several versions, some longer than others, so you might be able to get one that's just the bee's knees..?

Weather here in Brisbane area is hot, (30ºC) with a heatwave even 10º worse in the next few days, and in spite of the fact they reckon that La Naña is going to give us a humid, wet summer, so far we are yet to see the 'wet' bit and the lawn's as dry as boogerie..! But it would be great boating weather - if one had a boat that is.

In the past on working boats the anchor was stowed on deck but the chain was stored , just under the mast.

The mast held the winch and a long handle instead if expensive gears.

Midship chain storage might be an idea for some folks.

FF said:

In the past on working boats the anchor was stowed on deck but the chain was stored , just under the mast.

The mast held the winch and a long handle instead if expensive gears.

Midship chain storage might be an idea for some folks.

Click to expand...

Chain storage further aft does have some advantages and I've seen it done with a windlass on sailboats. But it's unfortunately not practical on a lot of boats, due to deck layout or a path through the cabin to get the chain down below.

"But it's unfortunately not practical on a lot of boats, due to deck layout or a path through the cabin to get the chain down below."


The work boats and sail boats had a plank on deck , the chain slid across where the mud could be scrubbed or washed off , only clean chain was allowed below to cut down on the chain low tide smell.

FF said:

"But it's unfortunately not practical on a lot of boats, due to deck layout or a path through the cabin to get the chain down below."


The work boats and sail boats had a plank on deck , the chain slid across where the mud could be scrubbed or washed off , only clean chain was allowed below to cut down on the chain low tide smell.

Click to expand...

That's exactly what I was picturing. A lot of trawler types extend the house pretty far forward, so the best you could get with that method is dropping the chain into the middle of the forward berth. Now if you could figure out a secondary helper windlass of sorts to allow chain to flow through a long (and potentially curvy) chain pipe without jamming up, then you'd have some options.