'Slovenly' is, I think, a little too emotionally-charged to suit the
circumstances, as far as I'm concerned. But if you ignore the name-calling
and character assassination, there's a reasonably good point to be made.

It's not hard to bend a windlass shaft under a heavy shock loading, and that
could possibly put the windlass out of commission. The rode's a long ways
away from the bearing and it has a lot of leverage. Of course you never
expect something like that to happen, but that's why they call them
accidents. A lot of people think that it's worth the trouble to take the
line off the windlass and cleat it to something really bullet-proof. If you
don't have a cleat that's really bullet-proof, consider building one into
the foredeck somewhere. Another possibility would be to take a shorter piece
of line and timber-hitch it to the rode well outside the bow chock, and then
cleat the other end of that to a foredeck cleat to take some of the load off
the windlass.

Nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of a thousand all this will be just
extra work with no payoff, but that thousandth time, when a harbor patrol or
Coast Guard boat rips through the bay at full speed responding to an
emergency and you take its wake right down the throat it might make the
difference.

Regards,
Tom Dacon

"David Brister" wrote in message
...
My 34 ft Abbatte has a Lofrans 12v anchor winch with a plain bearing
carrying the drum and gypsy. The boats on my marina are about evenly
divided
between those that remove the bowline from the drum after mooring up and
cleat it, and those that leave the line on the drum. Some people say
leaving
the line on the drum is slovenly and bad practice. We moor stern to the
quay
here so it's a good idea to have tension on the bowline, specially if it
is
windy.
I would be most grateful for some expert opinion.

Regards to all,

David Brister.