Installing foredeck bow pulpit and windlass

Mary Mar came to us with essentially no workable ground tackle for a boat this size.  It had been used for many years as a charter boat in the open bay where anchoring was not a priority. That of course will not work in the Bahamas where you have to anchor every day in 30-50’ waters in order to SCUBA and snorkel.  It had a couple of old Danforth anchors that were stored on the bow using screw down type anchor chocks.  The hawse pipes for the anchor rode were open to the elements and the Sampson post was bare wood with a stainless bar though the middle of it.  We needed to add a windlass, do something with that Sampson post, get rid of the open air hawse pipes and just make the whole thing work.

I already had the stainless 35# plow anchor and the new 1500 Watt Quick Hector windlass from my previous boat.  So we located an appropriate bow pulpit on EBay to use as the basis for this project.  We thought about using the hole in the pulpit for storing the anchor under the pulpit but it would have brought the fluke of the plow too close to the bow given that we had restrictions on how far we could push the bow pulpit forward.  Plus, we liked the stubbier look of a shorter bow pulpit so we also picked up a Windline stainless bow roller on Ebay as well.

We then used Coosa and glass to fabricate a simple but sturdy and functional box for the bow pulpit and windlass to be mounted to on the foredeck high enough to get over the raised lip around the bow of these Commanders.

4” stainless square tube was then purchased, polished and the given to our Austin based welder to add a cap and the base flange.  He did an excellent job.

The teak toe rail surrounding the new pulpit was removed and the underlying seam was glassed in.  The existing hawse pipe holes were glassed in.  The windlass was mounted to the Coosa box with plenty of force spreading stainless plates underneath and then the pulpit was tied to the Coosa box, again with polished stainless bar stock above and below.  The Sampson post cap was installed and the flange used to help hold down the back end of the pulpit box from the force of a stuck anchor pulling on the front of this unit.  An electrical outlet for 12 VDC for deep drop reels, etc. was added along with a pressurized fresh water quick disconnect.  We also installed LED lighting under the rim of the outside trim piece. The bow roller was added and then an anchor stopper was also installed later on.  Then all the edges were glassed, filled, faired and gel coated.

 

Below shows how the pulpit was actually cut into the bow and then glassed into place.