Back blogged...

What's that you say, 3 blog posts in a week?  It's a miracle.  Hold on while I consult my minions in hell to see if it's frozen over...

After building the bowsprit, Frank had decided that he didn't want to run into the same rot issue with the windlass being attached to the bowsprit, so low and behold he built us a windlass bracket for the windlass to sit on.  He decided to do this a while ago after perusing yachtworld (his obsession), and seeing it on another Hans Christian.  He thought that it was a great way to not have to drill any more holes into our precious wood and we happen to have a stick welder aboard leftover from our steel boat, so it only made sense.  He started off by building a plywood template to get the shape and the fit right.  From there we purchased 1/4" thick stainless steel plates and he cut the pieces out using an angle grinder.  The oh so familiar smell of burning metal brought back a flood of memories that I would've like to have forgotten.  Oh the horror!  We also had a leftover chunk of stainless tubing, so that was integrated into the structure to be used in order to help guide the chain.  Pretty straight forward project...came out well, and fit where it was supposed to.

We also bit the bullet and bought our anchor chain.  300 ft of 3/8" bbb chain which we marked every 30 ft with fluorescent orange spray paint and zip ties.  We used 1 zip tie to represent every 30' so therefore 3 zipties would represent 90 ft, 6 of them would be 180', etc.  We finally got to attach and install our Spade anchor which we purchased at the Miami boatshow last season.  Another thing to cross off the list.