Pontos French Four-Speed Winches

[Dockhead]

Anyone try these?

Pontos four-speed winch tested – Yachting World

Sounds amazing.

I have four electric winches (out of 10), but could really use one of these on the mast for halyards. Could imagine two of them in place of my Lewmar 44 secondaries, too.

[Stumble]

With the Class 40's moving to them, a number of Pogo 40's installing them, and roumors of some other performance boats starting to add them it certainly makes me think. I haven't priced them out, or what I could get for my self tailors, but it is very tempting.

[zboss]

They are very inexpensive - or more to the point - extremely competitively priced. We may buy them to replace a few winches we have that could use some power.

[Training Wheels]

Don't know if they would really make sense for a halyard winch.


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[Matt Johnson]

Originally Posted by Stumble

With the Class 40's moving to them, a number of Pogo 40's installing them, and roumors of some other performance boats starting to add them it certainly makes me think. I haven't priced them out, or what I could get for my self tailors, but it is very tempting.

Defender just started pushing them Pontos Americas 4-Speed Winches

Looks interesting

Matt

[frozenhawaiian]

got to use them racing last winter. the only other manual winch Ive used that was better was geared to a grinding pedestal with 2 huge aussies grinding. the pontos winch is awesome and I'm continually surprised at just how reasonably priced they are.

[Stumble]

I did some more research, and it looks like they are gaining a lot of traction in performance racing classes. Even the two speed ones with different gearing than traditional winches look pretty interesting. But then I have always wished some winch manufacturer made drop in gearing rings so you could change the traditional ratios.

These were initially announced as prototypes about two years ago when the company pulled them back for two more years of testing and designing. Which is pretty impressive given the reviews they got in 2013.

I really would like to see some and see how well they work. My dad still sails a good bit solo at 72, but can't go out as much because he can't grind the winches. The 'grinder' version may add a good number of sailing days for him.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Training Wheels

Don't know if they would really make sense for a halyard winch.


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And why do you say that? A halyard is on the contrary a great case of where you need a wide range of gearing. You need a really low gear to get final tension on, but a really high gear for when you start raising the sail, and gears in between. Sounds fabulous for this purpose. If I find myself with an extra $1500 I might just go for one of these.

[Training Wheels]

Yeah, rethinking it your probably right. I'm used to pulling it up by hand and just hardening the halyard up with the winch. With the multiple gears, might work well.


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[Stumble]

I just priced these out. If I can sell my primaries for ~$1,000 each, which seems reasonable, it would cost about $1,000 to install two of these in their place. I may seriously have to consider them.

[stillbuilding]

I just received a reply from a distributor that they would not be adequate to replace my Harken 60s.
Ah well, fond dreams.


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