Not too long ago, a customer came in needing a windlass installed on his SeaRay Sundancer. Luckily, he had some excellent plans for how he wanted it done. He wanted to take the lid off the anchor locker and fabricate a piece to fit over it that protrudes enough from the bow to stow the anchor. Sort of like a mini-bow pulpit. This was a great project for my shop because it encompasses a variety of skills, all of which I’m pretty good at, even if I do say so myself.
First I had to remove the old hardware and spec out a windlass and ground tackle that would work for this boat in Charleston local waters. We came up with a Lewmar V700 windlass (a vertical windlass) and a Delta anchor with about 15 ft. of chain and 175 ft of 1/2″ nylon for the rode.
Then I needed to remove the old hardware and fit a lid and bow pulpit that would support the windlass, roller, and anchor. Needless to say, this piece needs to be stout! So we designed a piece made of two thicknesses of 3/4″ marine plywood laminated together.
This would be covered in fiberglass cloth and sealed with several coats of epoxy to waterproof it. Then painted for a tough finish.
Finally, I had to install wiring of sufficient size to get a 35 amp load from the batteries to the very front of the boat, installing a circuit breaker, fuse, a rocker switch and contactor at the helm, and run beefy cables all the way to the bow. Let’s get to work!
You can see from the pictures here how the platform turned out. We’ll talk more about how it finally came together in the next post.