Anchor Locker Modifications
Heres what we did a few years back. I took a look at what others had done and tried to borrow ideas that we liked.
My goals were:
1) Bigger anchor locker
2) Windlass securely mounted
3) Windlass not a toe snubber on deck
4) Windlass not intrude into cabin
5) Access to undersides of bow cleats/pulpits
6) Not drain into the bilge
7) Not totally look like an amateur hack job (well, only somewhat success there
)
The new anchor shelf is strong enough to stand on, and uses the existing drain.
The cut in the pan is just forward of the forward "bulkhead" at the foot of the V-berth, so none of these changes were apparent from the interior. There is wall from the bottom of the new locker shelf to the bottom of old shelf.
I hadn't posted any pictures of this yet because I really wanted to clean things up and give the locker a coat of nice paint rather than the quick splash of HomeDepot special which has already mostly worn off (I did encapsulate all the potenitally wet wood with epoxy). I also still need to make a plug of some sort for the old rode exit in the hatch. We usually tied off our snubbber the same as Steve mentioned upwards in the thread.
We anchored quite a lot last summer and this setup works good for us.