Roger,

Thanks for the input:

1. I’m aware that most epoxies don’t stand up well to UV exposure.  Since I wasn’t sure how the bow sprit and anchor roller were going to work out, I decided not to worry about long term appearance initially.  Now that I’m past the ‘proof of concept’ stage, I’ll need to come up with a plan for maintenance.  I do like the look of the wood grain, so it’s likely a varnish will be part of the solution.

2.  It didn’t occur to me to worry about the furling line chafing through the epoxy.  In general, the routing of the furling line is an area where I failed to plan adequately.  Routing the line under the sprit as I showed in the video, resulted in the line being bunched up toward the bottom of the furler spool which would sometime result in the jib not unfurling completely.  I moved the line above the sprit, which worked better, but is still not completely trouble-free.  This is an area that I’ll need to look at again in the spring.

While I didn’t notice any buildup of dirt under the bow sprit, that’s probably mostly due to the fact that I didn’t look.  There’s no question that the sprit blocks easy access to some areas of the deck.  How much this matters probably depends mostly on your personal cleanliness standards. 

Peter Nyberg
Coventry, CT
s/v Silverheels (1988/2016)

> On Nov 9, 2019, at 8:47 AM, ROGER PIHLAJA <roger_pihlaja at msn.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi Peter,
> 
> I watched your video tutorial on the Bow Sprit/Anchor Roller.  Interesting concept.  I have 2 comments:
> 
> 
>  1.  Are you going to leave the clear epoxy finish on the bow sprit?  The reason I ask is because epoxy has poor UV resistance.  It would be better to protect the epoxy with a coat of paint or at least marine spar varnish.
>  2.  The bow sprit seems to have been left with a “dead space” under it.  You have threaded your roller furling control line thru this space.  (Interesting Fairlead!)  But, are you concerned the roller furling control line will eventually chafe thru the epoxy coating?  Also, won’t this dead space under the bow sprit collect dirt & crud and be very difficult to keep clean?
> 
> Roger Pihlaja
> S/V Dynamic Equilibrium
> 
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