Determining adequate winch size

[David M]

The largest winch he can afford:

[swabbmob]

That one might just do the trick

[btrayfors]

Before you invest a g-zillion bucks in electric or hydraulic winches, I'd suggest you consider a couple of things.

1. Absolutely, bigger is better, as most have said. BTW, it's not true at all that bigger winches mean slower trimming. Quite the opposite. They derive their power both from gearing and from diameter.

2. Self-tailing winches are the only way to go. Make it much, much easier for a single-hander or a couple to handle.

3. Given proper winch size and setup, a reasonably strong person can easily handle a 500-600 sq ft genoa. I'm gettin' up there in years, but can handle my 600 sq ft #2 genoa just fine with my Barient 32ST's, while the smaller Barient 28ST's are just OK for the 100% jib (485 sq ft). When it blows up, you really need the larger 32's.

4. Very important: you can sail your cruising boat without any winches! You can even tack her upwind without winches. But, you need to be very experienced and quick with helsmanship and with sail handling. By timing the speed at which your bow passes through the wind, and sheeting in promptly, you can trim your headsail pretty well by hand, requiring just a touchup with the winches. And, you can always head up a bit briefly to help with sheeting in.

While it might seem with a cutter that you need extra hands, when tacking upwind in a narrow channel you can just sheet the staysail midships and forget it. Just trim the genoa when you tack.

I'm not against electric or hydraulic winches. I actually have one...a Lewmar which I found was necessary to handle my Leisure-furl roller-furling main. But they do add complexity and expense, and may not be necessary at all, depending on your abilities and your cruising intentions.

Bill

[MidLandOne]

Originally Posted by btrayfors

BTW, it's not true at all that bigger winches mean slower trimming. Quite the opposite. They derive their power both from gearing and from diameter.

The sheeting speed will only be the same if both winches have the same power ratio - the drum diameter is only part of the gearing ratio. There is likely to be no point going to a larger physical sized winch if it only has the same power ratio as a smaller one.

I have had a hunt to substantiate this -

This link Boating Tips - Which Winch? may be useful to the original poster and mentions the inverse relationship between power ratio and sheeting speed.

This web page from Harken Harken: Winches Magnify People Power
gives a more extensive discussion of the relationship between power ratio, sheeting speed and drum diameter - again it may be useful to the original poster.

John

[harryrezz]

FWIW, one of the first upgrade I made several years ago was to toss the old Barients (I don't remember the size, but they were original and way too small) that were in place overboard and replace them with Andersen 52's. I can get the Yankee most of the way in on high, and finish it off on low speed. Barbara can get it started on hign but goes to low early on and can't quite get it in the last bit si I take over while "Guido" the autopilot steers.