Lawrence, More thoughts: I had a 9' dinghy with a bow eye used for towing. During a three day Nor'easter, while we were on a mooring in Oak Bluffs harbor on Martha's Vineyard, where we took green water over the bow of our 29' foot sailboat, the dinghy filed with rain and wave water, and filled with water, acted as a big sea anchor. That stopped the 29-footer from sheering from side to side, but .... eventually the load on the bow eye was too much; it broke; and the dinghy wound up in the far corner of the harbor along with the all the debris of landing stages that Oak Bluffs had just installed for power boaters. When the storm finally ended, and we retrieved our dinghy, I found that the bow eye had been made of brass, chrome plated, and it had just fractured. The eye was still on the dinghy rode, and the shank and bolt were in the bottom of the dinghy. ----------------------- You have the right idea to have the anchor attachment as low on the bow as possible. Remember a recommended length for an anchor rode is 10 X the water depth; but if you attach your anchor line to a bow cleat, you have to add the height from the water to the bow cleat to your 10 X calculation. So, low is the best way to fasten the anchor rode at the bow. Your ultimate aim is to keep the pull on your anchor stock from the anchor rode as close to horizontal as possible. Bigger boats use a special anchor rode weight that fits over the anchor rode and is slide down the anchor rode. The weight does two things for you: A) It keeps the pull on the anchor as close to horizontal as you can get, and B) the wave action lifting the weight on the anchor rode adds some damping to wave surge loads to keep the anchor from being pulled out of the bottom. Connie On 5/31/2018 12:16 PM, Lawrence Winiarski via montgomery_boats wrote:
I'm thinking about putting a bow eye, or u-bolt in the bow stem closer to the waterline (My m-15 doesn't have one) . I've got a few reasons for wanting this.
1. I'd like a mooring attachment down low, so the line/pendant can't catch or chaffe. I want to have one of those big pool noodles to put aroundthe line as a float/stiffener to keep the mooring ball away from my nice boat and have the whole thing near water level. I learned the hard way the last time when my boat drifted around and around and around the ball, eventually wound up stuck to it. Seems therehas to be a better way.
2. Another attachment point for a mooring ball so there are 2 points if one fails.
3. I'd like to have a low attachment point for a snubber for the anchor in rougher waves. It just seems better to be pulling fromdown low, especially if the waves are coming sideways.
I read through the archives and found thishttps://www.catalinadirect.com/index.cfm/product/1882/bow-eye-rebuild-kit-c-... but they say explicitly in the description
"Never moor your boat from the trailer bow eye. It is intended to take the load from the trailer winch directly forward of the boat....." I see the point. Bolt's aren't meant for side loads, but but reading lots of stuff on the net, it seems LOTS of people moor from the bow eye, andit seems that while side loads are bad for the bolt, side loads are also a reason to attach closer to the waterline to make the boat less tippy.
So what is the solution?