Sail Handling Winces - curious

[Donald Tyson]

During the years I had sailboats and love using the winches for various tasks including kedging off sand bars in the Chesapeake or in conjunction with the boom and extra pulleys for lifting objects on board.
Are Powerboaters using these winches for any meaningful purpose?

[doc]

I have been having similar thoughts.

[Donald Tyson]

Thanks for your reply. I was thinking "am I just imagining their usefulness?

[thataway]

Not a lot of use on a C Dory. The ranger tugs use one in their dinghy over the motor storage solution.

As you get into the yacht sized boats, they are used as capstans for the stern anchor, to the bank (trees or rocks). Smaller ones may be manual---larger are electric or hydraulic. Our our lives 62' Ketch, we used the genoa winches in the cockpit for capstans to bring the vessel stern too Cay in multiple European cities, and harbors. (Drop Bow anchor over 100 off the Cay, set bow anchor. Marie in dinghy takes end of line to a cleat usually on the Starboard side, but could be either as long as up wind. I take up slack with winch. She boards the boat to let anchor line out as I back down and take up the slack by the winch. By keeping a taught line to the dock we can slide in between two other boats--with lots of fenders. Due to our size, we often were put on the "Yacht" row, rather than a slip (non existant for that boat size in the Med)==or an end tie. Some "yacht harbors" were so tight, I could not turn the boat around, or line up for a slip. Occasionally I put the boat side ways on a wall, with the bow sprit overhanging the vessel ahear and the dinghy on davits by he vessel behind. I would set a kedge anchor amid ships, and when ready to leave, would use the winches or capstan (forward) to warp the boat out of the tight situation, and then use the engine to get under way. The kedge anchor could be used forward, amidships, or aft. No bow thruster--inflatable with 25 HP could be used as a "tug" if necessary.

[Donald Tyson]

I saw some at a store in Mystic recently and I realized that on a c-Dory one medium manual winch mounted on each Sid to the cockpit ( or even just one) might be nice to have for a multitude of tasks. Maybe it would be best if I buy the boat before taking credit for my great Idea. Thanks for your examples of use. That docking trick is priceless. I was an arborist until 40 yrs old and can imagine living without small pulleys and tag lines.

[Foggy]

I've seen the working end of a winch handle to fit deck fittings (waste, water, fuel)
on various boats, tho not common. Also, a winch handle may be a back up for a
failed bow anchor winch.

A winch handle needs a matched device to do work. Usually that is a self-tailing
or non self-tailing winch on a sailboat. Winches for a small power boats are
almost non-existent except the trailer winch to manually crank your craft out of
the water.

I have seen winches mounted on the front of off road vehicles used for self retrieval.

There is a sky winch available but, of course, the sky hook is not included nor is
the ladder which is required to get up there to set the hook. I imagine this is used
if you are sinking...

https://www.westmarine.com/greenfield-products-skywinch-manual-trailer-winch-12913216.html?queryID=23ad8a23cf968da2397a2a74ca2673bc&objectID=12913216&indexName=production_na01_westmarine_demandware_net__WestMarine__products__en_US
Or, use one for any purpose in order to work smarter, not harder.

Aye.

[thataway]

There are electrical winch handles--and some adaptors for any portable drill battery. 12V DC or even mains power if you are running an inverter or generator to recharge the battery in either type of electrical winch handle.

A specific battery powered winch handle:



If you have the drill and batteries, An adaptor chucked in a drill for a few bucks sure beats the $900 for an electric handle. This is a "self tailing winch"--for those who are not familiar, many of the early winches required a person to pull on the line as it came off the winch, to provide the friction to hold the line tightly on the winch--thus you may require an extra crewman to "tail" the winch. Good crew members can be hard to find, and they have to be fed and taken care of--especially on races which last over a week--to Hawaii, or La Paz, Mexico etc. Where you may have to fly the crew home on your dime. Then a short handed delivery crew has to take the boat back to its home port. ($$$) 9 crew members, plus 4 crew members flown from the US mainland to the port where the race finished, and paid $300 to $500 a day, plus food, and fuel. Occasionally some of the racing crew may have the extra two or more weeks to help bring the boat back.--that saves the air fare. Also one had to be very specific with a contract to clarify that the racing crew member wa not paid for time while racing. Also the insurance rider for a long race--plus it used to be a Single Side band radio was also reqiued--now it is satellite communicator and tracker.

Below is an example of an off the shelf battery operated drill motor with an adaptor for the ~ 1 inch square winch socket. Many are 8 point sockets rather than 4 sided winch handle.



I would not use an electric handle while racing, but manual winch handles at $60 to $100 a pop gets expensive if one was dropped overboard during each race. They even made floating winch handles--as if a racing skipper would drop out of the race to try and find a winch handle--basically about 12" long and 1.5 inches thick in choppy watters.

For those who have not been ocean racers on sailboats, with a 10 man crew, half would be off "watch" and resting or sleeping. The other 5 would be on deck. I liked 3 hour watches, but some skippers like 2 hours (for me the two hours off would not allow much sleep, especially if they needed food, and to change out of wet foul weather gear. They would trim sail and steer the boat. I always wanted at least 2 good helmsmen on the watch. It usually takes a few minutes to go to sleep (especially in a noisy racing boat, with winches adjusting the trim of sails, and crew members running or walking on deck, plus the noise of the water hitting the hull. 3 hours off would generally give you 2+ hours of sleep. The off watch is expected on deck with appropriate clothing and safety gear in place (tether to keep the person from being washed overboard)--also some form of locator beacon and strobe light if they went overboard.

[Foggy]

Had that ewinch handle (shown above) been available that I could have used for
about 3 decades years ago, I probably wouldn't need a total shoulder joint
replacement now...

Aye.
Like Grandma said, again: "Work smarter, not harder."

[thataway]