CW or CCW for line haul-in on vertical windlass drum?

[sailormed]

To clarify: on a vertical windlass I call gypsy the wheel that pulls in the chain (and anchor rode). I call drum the device above it that can be used as a winch for pulling in line.

Last year or year before (don’t remember precisely) I was the skipper of a big charter yacht and we were participating in the yearly ECC regatta (ECC 2019).
I had 2 or 3 crew on the bow and we were med mooring at the end of the day.

I have always instructed my crew to use the drum for tightening the “chaine-fille” in french (daughter-chain) the line going from the bow of the boat to the side chain under water.

The bow crew know that you have to release the center spindle so that the drum turns, but the gypsy is not turning when you want to use the drum for tightening lines. This way you don’t have to take the chain out of the gypsy.

After we had finalised the mooring and the beers came up to the cockpit they told me that they nearly lost the drum because it came off with the very thick line around it.

They saved it from going overboard and screwed it back in the windlass. Having other things to talk about we never went into further detail about this incident.

In May this year I am participating in the ECC2020 again and this incident got me thinking about what happened. This is a windlass so the gypsy is used both for letting chain out an pulling it in. OUT=CCW IN=CW.

The spindle has a normal thread so right handed thread. If my crew wrapped the line around the drum CW then they have to use the windlass button for IN turning the drum CW. But now the gypsy is turning CW and the drum and spindle are held tight by the rope.

Since the spindle has been screwed in CW it is now pushed out of the windlass together with the drum.
The conclusion for me is to always wrap the line to haul in COUNTER-CLOCKWISE.
Can you agree with this conclusion?

[tkeithlu]

I think I follow. The problem appears to be releasing the clutch on the drum versus not releasing it, such that the drum being held still by the anchor rode and then unthreading, given a right hand thread and wrapping clockwise.

Keeping the rodes on the drum and gypsy rather than moving them to cleats is tidy, but creates the problem. So, the crew needs to be trained to fully release the drum at the clutch before using the gypsy, or you need to move the rope rode. If you instead wrap the rode on the drum counterclockwise and use the gypsy without fully releasing the clutch, you will tighten the threads, but something will have to give when the drum is fully tightened and still held in place by the rode.

That made sense to me. How about to you?

[sailormed]

Hy tkeithlui I think we are not exactly on the same wavelength.
If the clutch is not released drum and gypsy will turn together.

There is then no problem because the chain in the gypsy will prevent the gypsy from turning CW (the chain is attached to the anchor that is in the bow roller) and can only turn CCW, but by doing so is lowering the anchor and upon seeing this the crew will realize their error and stop.

So not releasing the clutch will make it impossible to use the windlass drum for pulling in the line. (Unless you consider it acceptable to lower the anchor in the harbour while pulling in the line).