Odd Life Crafting installs bowsprit, anchor roller and windlass foundation

The wrong time to notice a weak bow is when the anchor starts taking load offshore, and Pacific is at the stage where that mistake would be expensive. Odd Life Crafting’s latest build episode focused on the bowsprit, anchor roller and windlass foundation, three pieces of hardware that change both the boat’s profile and the way the foredeck has to work under pressure.

Pacific is a 43-foot aluminum deck saloon sailboat being built in France. Meta Chantier Naval is fabricating the aluminum hull, rudders and keels, while Duca, Roberta Becker Montibeller and their son Oli are handling the systems and interior work themselves. VETUS signed a sponsorship deal for the project on June 6, 2024, but the build already had years of history behind it: the family bought a neglected 44-foot steel sailboat, refit it for two years, sailed the Brazilian coast, made a 13-day passage to the Caribbean, then sold the boat and moved to Europe to start again.

That background explains why the bow work matters so much. A bowsprit changes sail handling and anchor geometry, and the anchor roller has to make deployment and recovery cleaner without compromising the deck arrangement at the point where loads are highest. The windlass foundation is even more critical. Marine classification guidance for anchor windlasses calls for foundation drawings, below-deck support structure and footprint loads matched to the rated windlass, along with testing and chain stopper strength requirements. In other words, the bow has to be engineered as part of the hull structure, not dressed up as hardware after the fact.

Odd Life Crafting has long described the project as a series of seasons, starting with a 2016 sabbatical and running through earlier steps like a container-house build and the refit of the steel boat that carried the family across the Atlantic side of its sailing life. Meta Yachts says its Strongall method, developed and patented by Meta Chantier Naval in 1977, is based on a self-supporting aluminum deck-hull construction, which fits the expedition-cruiser logic behind Pacific. By the end of this bow installation, the boat read less like a project hull and more like a cruising yacht built to take anchor loads, offshore weather and long passages in stride.