Tidying up the deck - bow roller and hawse pipe

The original layout of the deck was cluttered, leaving little area to stand when on the bow. In addition to this the hawse pipe into the rope locker was too small a diameter to let the rope pass easily through. No eyes or chain could go through it either.

To fix things up a bit I decided to mount a bow roller to hold the anchor and fit a larger hawse pipe to allow better access to the locker.

There were just two problems with this idea. First, the bow is molded where the chain plate is meaning that I would have to build up to put the bow roller in place. Second there is a floatation chamber under the forward deck that the new hawse pipe would have to pass through.

In the photo the flotation chamber runs from under the forward windows on either side up into the bow.

Cutting a hole through the flotation chamber didn't seem like a really smart idea, so some glassing would be necessary.

First thing was to build up the area around the chain plate molding to make a surface to bolt the bow roller through. This was done with epoxy and filler shaping and sanding by hand to get the final shape. You can see the new hawse pipe sitting in place to get an idea of layout.

I then set about slowly grinding away the old pipe to open up the hole into the flotation chamber and then into the locker. In this photo you can see the hole cut through the deck and through the chamber.

And in this one, all the way down into the locker.

I then built up many layers of glass to create a new, larger pipe and reseal the chamber so that it was airtight and buoyant again.

The new pipe ready for sanding and filling.

Looking down through the new hawse pipe and new glass work.

The new layout of the deck fittings.