Get rid of it before it gets you.

[BlackHeron]

Self-tailing winches are also unnecessary, and often get in the way when fine-trimming a sail often or tacking quickly. A traditional non self-tailing winch with a jammer horn cleat backing it up is way more convenient and easier to keep trimmed unless you are a "set it and forget it, damned if it is luffing or overtrimmed" type of sailor.

[JPA Cate]

My opinion on this issue is that name calling of bonehead, clumsyson, dumb, and Johnny Nine Fingers is way over the top for a moment's carelessness.


Ann

[GILow]

I’ve been contacted by a pleasant CF member who has convinced me that they have a safe use for the winch on their boat, so if postage is not crippling for them they will be gifted it with only slight misgivings on my part. Their planned use was intriguing to say the least.

[kryg]

When I was learning to sail on a friends boat decades ago. He had one of though winches! You just knew you day was going to get spoiled if you did not take care. It was the same experience, a real bitch of a piece of hardware invented by a thoughtless inexperienced sail boat engineer. This pieces of equipment should be reported to health and safety!

What is interesting, you're not a lone in this kind of procrastination! Why is it a human tries to live with a faulty bit of gear as it's bolted on the boat by the manufacture? In my case there are a number of things on my boat I know will fail one day, yet I keep an eye on them till they harm me again and then and let them be?? Madness. Good luck, I hope yours was not an important digit!

Originally Posted by GILow

Hi all,

For the last ten years I’ve lived with this halyard winch, knowing full well it is a murderous bastard just itching to kill me in one of a dozen ways.

I’ve worked around the worst of the problems related to handles flying off and breaking limbs, noses, faces etc by religiously keeping the handle out of the winch at all times.

So, therefore, when it managed to drag my finger into the mechanism the other night I couldn’t reach the handle to wind it back.

Thankfully the admiral is calm under pressure and a qualified nurse, so she was able to come and extract me before staunching the worst of the bleeding.

The jury is out on whether I’ll lose my fingernail, but there’s no doubt I’ll have an impressive scar. Cleaning up the blood from around the boat will take a while too.

Anyway, this a call to any of us who, like me, have been intending to replace these winches to do it now. It may have taken ten years, but it finally got me, don’t let yours get you too.Attachment 239745

[rslifkin]

Originally Posted by BlackHeron

Self-tailing winches are also unnecessary, and often get in the way when fine-trimming a sail often or tacking quickly. A traditional non self-tailing winch with a jammer horn cleat backing it up is way more convenient and easier to keep trimmed unless you are a "set it and forget it, damned if it is luffing or overtrimmed" type of sailor.

Ideally you'd have the jam cleats with self tailers. Then you don't have to use them all the time, but you have the self tailers when you want them. Personally, I often skip them in light air when trimming a sail, but as the wind picks up I'll use them.

[Fore and Aft]

GiLow we mount our old winches on the porch posts or on various shelves inside the house. We had a nautical themed house long before it was in fashion.....
BlackHeron it sounds like you are the type of person who stops at every orange light and drives below the speed limit just to be "safe" Good on you I say, we need more people like you so we can all admire how daring you are.
Cheers

[GILow]

Originally Posted by BlackHeron

We are running wire halyards and non self-tailing winches for the last 5+ years. We must be the luckiest sailors ever since we have not died yet or even lost a finger or major appendage -not even a bruised knuckle. It's like the laws of chance don't even apply on the Twilight Zone that is our full-time cruising boat. Maybe I should buy a lottery ticket.

I wonder how many folks here even leave the marina...what a joke this forum is.

Mate, I don’t know what has got you so wound up about this (pun unintended) but seriously, relax.

On a little boat like yours I guess these winches might be fine. Your main probably weighs less than half of what mine weighs for a start, so you’d have been able to get your finger out without trouble.

As for me, I’m not telling anyone what to do, so go ahead and use what you like best.

I’m sharing my misfortune because it might sway some other people’s ambivalence or stop them procrastinating as I did.

Thankfully my ego is not too frail to admit my mistakes on a public forum, nor is it so utterly diminished that I feel the need to put down others for their mistakes.

Seek help.

[KP44]

Originally Posted by BlackHeron

Self-tailing winches are also unnecessary, and often get in the way when fine-trimming a sail often or tacking quickly. A traditional non self-tailing winch with a jammer horn cleat backing it up is way more convenient and easier to keep trimmed unless you are a "set it and forget it, damned if it is luffing or overtrimmed" type of sailor.

Exactly right.

Racers and those who watch their sails and trim constantly will not want self-tailers.

Cruisers and short-handed passage-makers are the sailors who benefit from the convenience and safety of self-tailing winches.

[BlackHeron]

House...on land...dirt...

Yeah, that Sounds just like "settling" to me.

All the serious cruisers I know have dirt habitations... not.

[El Pinguino]

Originally Posted by BlackHeron

House...on land...dirt...

Yeah, that Sounds just like "settling" to me.

All the serious cruisers I know have dirt habitations... not.

Idle curiosity - how many years and sea miles have you done with your wire halyards on your HR?

Sounds like a few circumnavs.

[El Pinguino]

Originally Posted by KP44

I agree. Self-tailing winches all around on cruising boats.

About half of mine are self tailers , including the one on the mast ( they say that is a sure sign of an insurance job).

I have jamming cleats as shown. Great for when you have crew but the self tailers come into their own when you are on watch single handed.

In the pic the jib sheet is on a 'passage making' winch. Inshore with crew to keep amused the jib sheets go onto the two big primaries ( you can see one in the pic ) where they are out of the helmsman's way.

[cal40john]

Originally Posted by kryg

When I was learning to sail on a friends boat decades ago. He had one of though winches! You just knew you day was going to get spoiled if you did not take care. It was the same experience, a real bitch of a piece of hardware invented by a thoughtless inexperienced sail boat engineer. This pieces of equipment should be reported to health and safety!

What is interesting, you're not a lone in this kind of procrastination! Why is it a human tries to live with a faulty bit of gear as it's bolted on the boat by the manufacture? In my case there are a number of things on my boat I know will fail one day, yet I keep an eye on them till they harm me again and then and let them be?? Madness. Good luck, I hope yours was not an important digit!

Health and Safety would condemn all sailboats as unnecessary risks.
The few encounters I've had with health and safety results in ridiculous requirements making the task they review near impossible to accomplish.

[LittleWing77]

Originally Posted by GILow

My plan is to cermonially burn it at midnight while offering a suitable tribute to whichever gods of sea and wind are hanging around.

I could not, with a clear concience, allow anyone else to be maimed by the lothesome thing, particularly now that it has developed a taste for blood.

GILOW!!!

That is borrid news! (about your injury, I mean)

I, too, would opt for some form of ceremonial destruction that would involve getting a bit of your own back.

(Noting that, although the injury was dire, and not excusing the loathesome winch.... you still *are* able to type - in order to let us eager Forum Members know about it, of course...!)

Swift healing!
Warmly,
LittleWing77
And do get rid of that winch - forthwith and without delay!!!

[StuM]

Originally Posted by KP44

Exactly right.

Racers and those who watch their sails and trim constantly will not want self-tailers.

Cruisers and short-handed passage-makers are the sailors who benefit from the convenience and safety of self-tailing winches.

I'm at a bit of a loss here. I've been cruising, passage making and racing for many years in everything from 20-50ft boats.

How is a self tailing winch any slower or more difficult to trim than a non-tailing winch and a jammer?

[donradcliffe]

You can add a couple of cracked ribs to the toll these little f#$%kers have taken. Trying to reef the main by myself decades ago rounding Pt Conception.