The factory bowsprit came with two anchor rollers. The starboard is a nice cast bronze roller, but the port was a hard rubber roller that was buried into the teak. Although there where two rollers on a fairly wide bowsprit there was not quite enough room to use both rollers. The goals of this project were to upgrade the anchor roller on the port side and add a windlass.

John, at the Attainable Adventure Cruising website, makes a good argument for having only one anchor on the bow. He also has a good article about anchor roller design. What he describes makes a lot of sense to me. In short he suggest two bow rollers set apart fore and aft, as well as side to side. If the anchor is stowed in the aft most roller the other roller is free to pull a line up from a mooring while keeping it clear of the primary anchor.

I was able to rework the factory bowsprit to accomplish this by having the anchor come up through it. Our new anchor is a 44 lbs Spade.