My windlass sits as shown in the picture below. Bolted through the pulpit and the deck with a large backing plate underneath, holding the windlass, pulpit, and samson post. Total thickness where it bolts through is about 7.5", so there's a good bit of chain drop before it hits the bottom of the deck (through the 3" hawse hole).
My chain locker is fairly tall, so no issues with feeding. After 300 feet of line goes in and then 90 feet of chain on top of it, there's still about 2 feet from the top of the pile to the underside of the deck (which means over 2.5 feet to the bottom of the windlass).
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