After one to many injuries to the rotator cuff and subsequent surgery, anchoring became a dreaded chore. With another boat out of the question, it had to be a DIY installation. Installing a windlass on a H33.5 is a tough one. First you have the below deck furler, second an anchor well too shallow for chain to fall and third, absolutely no bow roller whatsoever.

Took lots of pictures of other boats for ideas and began with a wooden mockup and the aid of a off-the-shelf bow roller. Not sure how to proceed otherwise, I enlisted the help of a local boat builder/fabricator. Working from my mockup, he came up with the final design and fabricated the bow roller. I think he did an excellent job, but as he says, everything is a compromise.

The dual roller handles the storage of two anchors; however the windlass only supports the starboard roller. The port roller works fine with rope rode. The windlass is a Lewmar 1000 and is mounted on a half inch thick aluminum member installed in the anchor well. The roller assembly is made from 3/8 inch aluminum and powder coated. Custom pins were manufactured to hold the off-the shelf nylon rollers. We use 90 feet of 5/16 HT chain and 200ft of rode.

A remote control module was installed along with the pendant control in the anchor well. Dropping the anchor can be done from the cockpit, but I usually go forward to make sure everything goes well. Retrieval requires clearing the chain from under the windlass as there just isn’t enough “fall” and space to store the chain.

It’s a working solution for us. A design to make the anchor well deeper is on our list.