How not to get towed.

[wholybee]

Winches should be as strong or stronger than a cleat on a boat. They are frequently used as a hard point for towing, mooring, etc. I don't think the towboat operator made a mistake there. Chainplates are considered safe as well.

I can relate to the experience though. Once as I was coming to a mooring ball in fairly high wind, just as my crew on deck was reaching out to attach a line to the ball, crew from the marina in an inflatable yelled at them for the line, and my crew obliged and tossed it to them. All hell broke loose at that point. My bow fell off the wind, and the dinghy was unable to hold the boat against the wind. I was than out of control being blown unto a dock full of other boats. To make it worse, I was being blown over several mooring lines so had to put my boat in neutral. With the dinghy failing to pull my boat and when there was no other option to avoid a collision but to motor out myself I put my boat in gear, got just to safety, and then my prop grabbed a line. The good news was that a line wrapped around a line was enough to secure my boat until more help could arrive.

All that would have been avoided if my crew attached the line to the buoy instead of tossing it to the staff that offered help. They literally had a hand on the buoy at the time.

Sometimes these things happen, and we learn from them. Mistakes were made, but my crew, and your crew, (and by extension you and I) were just as at fault as the towboats involved.

[wholybee]

Originally Posted by Jammer

I find that it's difficult. The challenge is to be sufficiently assertive to prevent exactly the sort of accident described in the OP, without being a jerk and jeopardizing the relationship with the service provider and, possibly, crew and onlookers. And this balance must be struck, all too often, with someone you've known for all of 90 seconds.


Thinking out loud here, I wonder whether part of the problem with towing insurance is that it encourages towing operators to work quickly and wrap up jobs rather than take extra time for which they may not get paid. Perhaps the skipper paying $300 an hour to the towboat is taken more seriously when he says to slow down and be careful.

What I have learned is that this is a discussion you need to have with your crew before the situation happens. Your crew follows your orders, period. If a dockhand, marina staff, or captain of another boat starts giving orders, they hold until you confirm. That way there is no yelling or confusion at the time of the incident.

[noelex 77]

Originally Posted by wholybee

Winches should be as strong or stronger than a cleat on a boat. They are frequently used as a hard point for towing, mooring, etc. I don't think the towboat operator made a mistake there. Chainplates are considered safe as well.

The winches should have been fine for the load applied. I also don’t think the tow boat operator made a mistake in assuming the winches should have been strong enough.

However, cruising boats should have strong cleats. These should be stronger than the winches. The cleats (or Sampson post) should be capable of not only towing the boat, but dragging the boat off a hard grounding in an emergency. Winches cannot do this safely, it requires a seriously strong attachment.

Unfortunately cleats of this strength are rare.

[StuM]

Originally Posted by donradcliffe

Normally, the jib sheet winches are designed for the highest loads on a boat and are the strongest thing to tie to for towing.

Was this the tow line or the stern side tie?

I've done dozens of "side tows" to sailboats where the main towline runs back to a sheet winch. It's SOP and I've never had an issue with it.

[thinwater]

Slightly off topic and quite possibly wrong....


After any engine work, and I mean anything at all, including a filter change, let the motor warm up for 20 minutes. IME, most engine failures occur very soon after start up because of something that would have revealed itself during the warm up. Could be as simple as leaving a fuel valve closed or a hose that was not put on just right. Nope, I don't care who says extended idling is bad for the motor. This is the obvious exception.


Been there, done that.

[donradcliffe]

Originally Posted by thinwater

Slightly off topic and quite possibly wrong....


After any engine work, and I mean anything at all, including a filter change, let the motor warm up for 20 minutes. IME, most engine failures occur very soon after start up because of something that would have revealed itself during the warm up. Could be as simple as leaving a fuel valve closed or a hose that was not put on just right. Nope, I don't care who says extended idling is bad for the motor. This is the obvious exception.


Been there, done that.

It was an electric motor.

[wyb2]

Originally Posted by coldfish

It didn't snap the mount, it just pulled it out of the deck.

Like a big lever. Once it popped the wood, it was practically like a having a crow bar on it, where instead of your arm, it had the weight of 2 multi-ton vessels. And it was a pretty good sized wave and windy. Honestly, it probably would have torn a cleat out as well. You need to leave some flex space and he had it tight. I should have been the one to tie it up and not that guy.

Are the pictures from something else? It pretty clearly looks like the bronze snapped, which would be consistent with the lever arm effect you are describing.

Not sure if the people saying the winch should be indestructible looked at the pictures. This mounting style seems to be a thing on some more classic boats, but the strength of the design is clearly directional.

[Fore and Aft]

ColdFish you need to post a picture of the other cockpit winch so we can see the mounting arrangement. I would have no problems using our cockpit winches for a towing tie up point.
Cheers

[S/V Illusion]

Originally Posted by donradcliffe

Normally, the jib sheet winches are designed for the highest loads on a boat and are the strongest thing to tie to for towing.

Quite correct. I suspect in this case, the owner had no clue and never inspected how the winches were mounted to ensure there was a proper and adequate mounting plate rather than simply held with washers as it appears from his description.

Winches when properly installed will survive a load often much greater than the weight of his 30 ft boat.

[GILow]

Geez, can't believe some.of the snide comments on the quality of the winch mounts.

To.the OP, sorry to hear this happened to you. On the upside, it is a good spur to encourage you to be more assertive about how your boat is treated. And it sounds like you have taken that lesson from this experience.

To those that are critiquing your winches, I'd comment that I trust my primaries to take any load the sails throw at them. I installed them myself and really thought through the loads and angles.

But no way in hell would I let them be attached to a hip tied tow boat. The dynamic loads from this 14 ton cruiser pulling against some other randomly moving stink boat are unfathomable.

The angles would be unpredictable too, whereas my primaries are optimised to pull against a precise fixed point of a turning block aft of the cockpit.

So fine, if others want to.do that to their winches, go nuts. Me, I'll insist on the bloody great big cleats I've installed around the boat for just these sorts of occasions.

And having recently towed a 24 ton, 50 foot timber racer home after her engine quit, I can say the cleats were just the ticket.

[Jim Cate]

One also wonders about what sort of line was used in the hookup. If it was old genoa sheets (so often the case), line designed for low stretch, then shock loading is an issue. If it was reasonable sized nylon three strand, perhaps enough stretch would have mitigated the loads and the winch would still be in place.

Who knows?

Jim

[Celestialsailor]

Originally Posted by GILow

Geez, can't believe some.of the snide comments on the quality of the winch mounts.

I know, right? But he seems to do that a lot. I think they call it Holier-than-thou syndrome.

[donradcliffe]

I looked at your pictures, and I think its time to move on and address the reason for your post.

This is an antique boat with antique winches and unique cast winch supports. How can the owner best restore the function of the winch while keeping the classic look?

I would scour Ebay and the consignment shops for the winch. Looks to me like a Merriman from the 60's, and you might get lucky. Otherwise you could modernize both winches.

The casting could be recreated with $$ It looks like it was cracked a long time ago.
The grain in the board that broke looks pretty crappy. You could sister it with a sandwich, but it may be better to build a new platform using fiberglass than to replace the casting.

[Jammer]

If it were my boat, I think I would make new winch supports out of wood and cut angle iron pieces from 316 stainless where the support meets the coaming and deck. That would allow existing holes and fasteners to be used (if desired), and would fit the idiom of the boat.

Functional non-self-tailing winches are readily available used and are reasonably priced. The main thing to watch is to try to find new enough ones that parts are still available.


As for the wood coaming, I would replace the whole piece rather than try to patch it. It's not a very big piece of wood, and is only held in place with screws.

[Celestialsailor]

Originally Posted by donradcliffe

I looked at your pictures, and I think its time to move on and address the reason for your post.

This is an antique boat with antique winches and unique cast winch supports. How can the owner best restore the function of the winch while keeping the classic look?

I would scour Ebay and the consignment shops for the winch. Looks to me like a Merriman from the 60's, and you might get lucky. Otherwise you could modernize both winches.

The casting could be recreated with $$ It looks like it was cracked a long time ago.
The grain in the board that broke looks pretty crappy. You could sister it with a sandwich, but it may be better to build a new platform using fiberglass than to replace the casting.

Perhaps better yet...,Blue Pelican in Alameda has tons of that stuff and if not, shoot a picture to Minney's in Newport Beach.