[Anonymous]

I have a Bavaria 38 built in 2005. It has a single bow roller for the anchor.
I would like to fit a double bow roller like on the Bavaria 46. I would appreciate any advice.

Cheers,

John

[Anonymous]

Hi John,

We have a Bavaria 34 on which we have fitted a second bow roller for picking up moorings without having to move our anchor. The bad news is that the way in which the existing stainless steel fitting is fixed to your boat is simply not good enough and the deck is likely to crack at the aft edge of the fitting at some stage. I wrote an artical on this some time ago when our boats deck broke up whilst on her mooring in a NE force 7 on the Menia Straits, Anglesey. ( Not sure how you access old articles on the BOA site)
Although the fitting appears to be well held down by the three large bolts through the deck, the deck is too thin and is only fixed to the hull with 4 small self tapping screws under the fitting. This is the only really poor design we have found on our boat, but it is quite scary.
Our solution was to fit a stainless steel channel to the inboard end of the bolts holding the forstay chainplate, inside of the anchor locker. We drilled a large hole through the channel through which is mounted a large diameter steel pin athwartships. Two lengths of screwed SS bar now pass through holes in the pin and anchor the bow roller fitting to the deck with lock nuts above and below. The deck was also thickened up localy to help spread the load from the bolts. In effect we have triangulated in steel taking the loads back to the chainplate bolts, which are substancial and well bedded in the thick construction of the stemhead.
We used the existing SS fitting to which we added side cheeks and rollers in such a way that the top roller is above the bow and the lower roller just protrudes forward of the bow so that the load is kept as close to the fitting as possible, avoiding the tendency for the aft edge to want to lift.
The top of the screwed bars were carefully finished and the depth of the top nuts reduced and machined to clear the anchor chain and look more like the original dome heads.

If you need more detail please contact me.

[Anonymous]

Hi Alan

I read your post with interest as I would also like to fit a second bow roller to my Bavaria 30. I have just fitted an anchor windlass which has an offset rope drum to one side of the chain gypsy. It would be good to fit the 2nd roller for this. Is it possible for you to post a couple of photos of your set up? This would be much appreciated.

Regards
Alan Ball

[Author]

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