I’ve been working on adding a Lewmar Pro-Series 1000 horizontal anchor windlass. Although my wife often insists on bringing up the anchor I figured it was time to have a proper anchoring system for the boat. I didn’t want the windlass to be sitting proud on the deck so I took some measurements of the anchor locker and worked up a rough CAD of a support structure inside the anchor locker and below the locker cover.
Design:
After purchasing a sheet of 1/4” FRP flat stock and 6’ of 1/4” tube from McMaster-Carr I made some 2X4 and plywood mockups to ensure that things fit up. In addition to supporting and bearing some of the loads of the chain, the port side of the shelf will be used to mount a deck/anchor chain wash-down pump and hose.
After getting the mockups correct I cut the FRP and did some dry-fitting. Good thing because I was always finding errors and mistakes in my design.
With the parts cut and ready to go I started glassing in the transverse tube to the sides of the hull. The ends were fillet bonded and left to cure. When the fillet bond epoxy was set I applied fiberglass cloth using a mixture of West System epoxy and colloidal silica.
The flat shelf of 1/4” FRP used to support the windless and wash down pump were then epoxied to the cross-beam and the struts tabbed and glassed to the bar, the shelf and then glassed to the bulkhead to add additional strength to the structure. Before doing any glass work though, I drilled the mounting holes for the windlass and associated wiring rather than deal with it after the structure was in place. Pretty tight fit in the anchor locker.
Dry fit of the windlass after windlass shelf installed:
Final sanding and painting will be done next year when the decks are repainted.
No comments:
Post a Comment