Aye! It would be, Mike, the fairest lead.
This boat may have another piece of lumber or aluminum up there on the bow. The lead could be from an inboard samson post. It's going to be complicated losing weight from the bow, but it's serious now! IE, litlgull will have drastic measures to remove weight from the bow.
But I'm also prejudiced against using the anchor roller channel as a fair lead for rope. For anchoring.
That's certainly what they have become, especially the longer ones that bolt to a good piece of the deck and become a short bowsprit. Strong enough to take the weight of the boat. O sure! But structural and load data for a ULB-3 doesn't exist.
Really don't know, do I, but in a blow the only secure lead off the boat will be over a big bolted chock on the rail. not the anchor housing. Afterall it's only sheet metal
Don't remember where I got convinced, but an anchor roller's only job is to launch and retrieve its anchor and lead chain. After the anchor is set its warp and chaffing gear moves over to a rail chock. Move the warp back into the launcher when bringing it back aboard. Should be able to reach over and pick it up and move it....no stanchions or pulpit tube in the way.
And the anchor ought to be removed from the launcher whilst underway. Of this I've been persuaded. Is this a Pardey thing? Nope, it's a weight thing.
That anchor and roller gear will weigh in at 35/45lbs out there on the nose. Plus the weight of a second anchor and any chain and rode in the forepeak.
The mouth of the roller should lead rope fair but it doesn't. The bugle is only designed to retrieve chain and anchor from straight down or straight ahead. It's also possible to bend the roller especially if it is cantilevered without an added strut. More weight.
There recently was a UTube video that showed an untended moored boat dipping and lifting its bow in a blow. The boat danced and dipped in a wave and came up with the mooring rode caught in the anchor fluke housed in the roller. Then the bow of the boat started tearing itself apart. And pulling the boat under. In this case the boat was moored and the anchor was the boat's anchor ready to be deployed.*
Lesson one: It's nice and tidy to keep your anchor where any line off the bow can hook on to it. It can happen even in a marina. There was/is a picture that showed the very thing happened in a slip.
I'm convinced that IDEAL leads from a chock off the rail should be universally fair, no sharp angles.
Should lead fair at any angle: aft - forward - down. Down and to the side. sideways at any angle.
UP?
Of course, YES to that. That Rostand bollard with the blade closer would be hard, me thinks, on nylon surging in a rising Panama lock where lines lead up to the canal sides far above. Or a pier or a wall in a big tide harbor.
If you are going to fair lead the painter through the roller, maybe the keeper loop over the channel should be better thought out and stronger than the flimsy looking bars and straps that came with store-bought rollers.
*There is a strong case for anchoring - if we insist on keeping the rode/chain in the anchor-roller channel - by using a simple piece of gear called
THE TURTLE.
[Reese Palley, There Be No Dragons: How to cross a big ocean in a small sailboat. Sheridan House 1998, pgg 116/117]
The Turtle is a short piece of nylon line with a chain hook at its outer end,
connected to the boat AT OR NEAR THE WATERLINE to an eye or special strong bronze fitting.
Take the tension off the anchor roller by hooking the chain or rolling hitch to the warp and have the turtle take the weight of the chain.
No chafe on the nylon. As we might get if rigging a bridle at deck level.
We've lowered the 'lever' effect of the anchor rode by taking it off the bow and putting it nearer the waterline.
Thereby inncreasing the scope.
And if we are using all chain rode, we've cancelled the noise the link makes in the roller.
A decklevel BRIDLE can be used to take the weight of the warp away from the anchor roller. It, itself will have some chafe issues when leads are not symetrical. It is rigged too high on the boat to be really useful in worsening conditions.
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