A Narative About an Anchor Winch Problem

[RaymondR]

I was trying to extract a photo from my files for a post in another thread and came across this image. I have probably posted the image, and maybe even the story, somewhere on the forum before however here goes.

Years ago I was in the Hinchenbrook Passage and went to pull the anchor and the winch would not hoist. I could hear the motor running but no rotation above deck occurred.

On disassembling it I found that the brass pinion gear had completely worn out. Pondering on this I did a rough calculation on how much work the winch had done and found it was actually very little because the boat had spent most of it's life day sailing from a marina.

No problem, I'll just buy another one. On finally recovering from the shock and horror occasioned by the price in the catalogue I decided there was no way I was going to spend that much money replacing something that transient.

So I decided to use the parts from the deceased, vertical shaft windlass and an industrial worm drive gearbox to manufacture a horizontal shaft windlass. Horizontal because I thought not having the 90 degree bend hawsepipe might allow a bit more galvanizing to stay on the anchor chain.

A couple of days on my little lathe and a couple of trips to a salvage yard produced the winch in the image. I used the DIY winch for about five years before I sold the boat, which sale occurred about five years ago, and as far as I know the winch is still going strong.

[rslifkin]

Other than the below deck motor and slightly industrial looking case, I could almost assume that was an off the shelf product!

[Allied39]

Yup, you see that ingenuity in Cuba too.
I am pretty happy with my Lofrans Tigres, and the windlass was a fair price considering some 20 years on it's working like new.
I can definitely see the need to improvise when the prices are forced to unacceptable levels though.
Ain't a lathe a gem to have. Limited only by your imagination.

[RaymondR]

My new boat came with a Loffeans Leopeord which I serviced last year and I was very impressed with it's semi-industrial construction. Damned heavy though and I had to build a lifting yoke and get a mate to do the lifting from on deck whilst I put the nuts on the bolts below deck to get the gear box back in place after I serviced it.