Desired Windlass Run Time

[Cadence]

A question for those using strickly chain. Do you not come to a shocking halt when the rode is takes up tight? Do you keep a chain cutter on board to free yourself, without losing all of your chain, is the anchor is snagger?

[Cheechako]

Cadence- the chain can pull up bar tight when there is enough chop. Most use a nylon snubber3/8 or 1/2 nylon and a chain hook. This takes up the shock load. All chain rode is very convenient.
Paolo- try letting all your chain rode out in deep water where your anchor wont touch bottom, let it untwist for a while, then make sure it doesnt have a twist that overrides the wildcat "teeth" as you are taking it in. Make sure you have the end tied off! It sounds like you have been twisting the chain over time. (probably boat rotating in flat calm middle of the night)

[Cheechako]

Paolo- I forgot to mention, if you have a grooved bow roller, It should help you untwist it while you are taking it back in. But just bring it in slowly and watch that it is not twisting as it goes over the wildcat!

[Paolo]

Cadence and Cheechako

That's it! Just a second before downloading your replies, it flashed to me.

The chain has an accumulated twist (previous owner over several years) which is not cleared out because of the 'teeth' of the gipsy.

It keeps on twisting down in the anchor well.

As suggested: pull out the chain not using gipsy, undo it from its end fastening and untwist.

Will try and let you know.

A million thanks to all.

Paolo

[Paolo]

Originally Posted by Cadence

A question for those using strickly chain. Do you not come to a shocking halt when the rode is takes up tight? Do you keep a chain cutter on board to free yourself, without losing all of your chain, is the anchor is snagger?

Good point. No I do not have a chain cutter; would need to be too large for me to operate.

Must see what combinations chain/rope are possible.

Thank you

Paolo

[Cadence]

I don't believe you would find a pair if bolt cutters would be too large.

I would rather have a nylon rode with some chain to reduce the amount needed for scope. That's me. With chain I guess you don't need an anchor sally.

[Sandero]

Go bow to at a dock and let your windlass dump all the chain on the dock.

The take the end and pull it out straight and untwist it as best you can.

Run it back in and carefully make sure it is not twisting and you have removed the twist from end to end.

[Cheechako]

or head to deep water and let it all out!

[Sandero]

Head to deep water? Great idea if it's close enough but kind of a foolish idea to unwind chain. I have 200 feet and the closet place I can think of is 20 miles away. I don't think there are any soundings over 200' in LIS for example.

KISS. do it on the dock.

[Jim Cate]

FWIW,

Before you let it all hang out, be really sure that your windlass has enough grunt to raise it back up!!

And back to the eariier query about the necessity of multiple hoists in 8 hours -- not at all uncommon to require several attempts within a few minutes when anchoring in strange and deep anchorages. While the battery/charger/gen set combo seems to work for a boat that already has all that gear, it is a VERY expensive and space hungry solution to a pretty simple problem. Reasonable size cables from the house bank, and running the engine while hoisting anchor (under normal conditions) will have little impact on you or your neighbors. In the rare circumstance where you can't run the engine, the house bank should have adequate capacity to get you going. This system has worked without problems on Insatiable II for years and hundreds of anchorings, and is what you will find on most long term cruising yachts.

Finally, when thinking about your amp-hour consumption, remember that while your windlass will draw 80-100 amps under heavy load, most of the retrieval time is under fairly light load with considerably less current draw.

Cheers,

Jim and Ann s/v Insatiable II

[s/v Jedi]

When you lower all you have in deep water you might not be able to pull it up anymore. Bad idea!

I don't like the dock method either; we drop the whole lot in shallow water with sand and work all the twists towards the anchor while hauling it back in. The anchor swivel does the rest.

ciao!
Nick.

[GMac]

A few comments.

Maxwells Max Working load is 1/3 of the Max pull so on a F800 the Working load is 267lb or 121kg. Maxwell are good with numbers so a F800 means 800lb max pull, a VWC3500 means 3500lb max pull and so on. A bugger when you they are NZ made and we are metric though but does go to show the US market is their biggest by a long way or was until recently until things went POP. Pretty damn quiet there but the EU is going very well for them at the moment.

But Maxwells new model numbers are being based more on the main sized chain they are designed for hence the RC10 (10mm or 3/8") or the RC6 (6mm or 1/4"). The metric countries are winning over you old imperial lot in the US

Maxwells speed numbers, like most, are based on factory testing. So they are well wired up with no 1/2 dieing batteries attached to the end. Hence real life speed is likely to be a little lower. But then Maxwell's published numbers are probably more accurate than everyone elses, except James Nilsson's I'd say.

Originally Posted by witzgall

The Windlass to be installed will be a Maxwell RC800, 1000 Watt motor using 5/16 G4.

If you haven't already brought it I'd seriously suggest you get one of the newer RC8's or if you want grunt to burn a RC10-8 (10mm version with 8mm gypsy fitted). They are the newer and newest offerings from Maxwell. So new the RC8 isn't on their website yet. But it has been in real life use for a while now, just to make sure everything is apples and everything is very Apples. They are a nice unit and are a little cheaper than the 800.

Power supply is very important and generally the cause of most crappy winch performance. Poor supply = poor performance and shorter life span. Don't short cut on wiring size. Which, by the way the manufacturers do oversize a bit so as to allow for any drop over the boats length.

Paolo - what is causing the chain twist? Common causes are non-symmetrical bow rollers due to wear over time. replace roller. Poorly made chain, common in chains out of the east and which Aussie is awash with. Not much you can do there except swap chains to a well made one. Spinning anchors is another, chuck in a swivel. There are a few well known 'spinner' anchors but all will do it if they get a little bent somewhere.

Originally Posted by Cadence

Do you not come to a shocking halt when the rode is takes up tight?

That would be a reasonably unusual situation for 99% of boaters. Unless you use the tiny chain/massive anchor technique and/or are in some pretty nasty weather with waves you won't see a 'shocking halt' often, if at all.

[GMac]

Bum, forgot one important bit.

New motors. The winch guys, not all but a few so far and I'm sure the rest will follow, are starting to fit variable power motors. Basically they'll suck massive Hp at the start and taper off as the load reduces.

For example the big Lofrans sitting next to me has a '1500W' motor. But it will run at 2000W for 20 seconds to give a huge 'snatch load' and get the gear moving upwards. As the load decreases the motor will taper back in wattage to as little as 700W. This is good if you intend to anchor deep as it give a lot longer running time before the thermal overloads will kick in. Basically less power sucked equals less heat generated equals longer running time. Cool trick don't you think.

Being lazy I'm not going to get the winch out but it will say something like this -
2000W for 20 sec then
1500W for 120 sec then
1000W for 300 sec then
700W for 900 sec.

As most good name winches use motors from the same Italian manufacturer this will spread.

But be aware that the snatch loads are BIG so if your anchor is stuck in a rock it is very possible your bow will go down rather than the anchor come up. A bloke in a 36ft launch found that one out here not long ago. Had the stem head just underwater before he took his eyes of the bikini clad ladies on the boat next door I have vid of it at work and will try to put it up, it's quite a site. Very much a 'Bill and Ben go boating' moment

Makes it a little hard to work out the amps consumed now though but at least it will be less then before