halyard electric winch ?

[Noisykate]

Before you spend any money, try spraying the track with a PTFE sprayed lubricant (we use 'sailkote'). It makes a huge difference on ours - a sailing friend who has only ever chartered could not believe how much easier our (larger) sail was than anything she had sailed before.

[wedivebc]

So I'm sorry if I wasn't clear on why I wanted the electric winch. My main halyard runs inside the mast to a small pulley at the base where the wire halyard leads UP to a straight 1:1 type winch. There is no halyard exposed to pull on and it's wire so that rules out hauling then tightening the last bit, I have to hand crank all the way up and all the way down either way.
The only problem I was hoping this winch would solve is to be able to easily hoist the sail from the cockpit. It goes up and down just fine I just feel safer in the cockpit when alone on the sea.

[Cadence]

Originally Posted by AiniA

You have gotten suggestions, one other to consider is a low-friction mast track. We are installing a Tides system but there are others. They greatly reduce the amount of friction in the mainsail, especially if you have full length battens. Cheaper than an electric winch. I agree the Canadian Tire one would only last a number of months exposed to salt spray.

I would be afraid of ripping the halyard right out. Brute force isn't the answer. run it aft to the a hand powered winch. Steal the one, probably, on the mast. As others have said, it isn't sail weight but friction in the track. And as stated above it probably would not last long in a salt water environment and look like hell.

[waterman46]

Originally Posted by wedivebc

Since I started single handing my new (to me) boat I have found one of the biggest difficulties is getting the main sail up. The wire halyard is fed to a 1:1 hand winch with screw down brake located at the mast. I was thinking of replacing it with something like this Tundra Tested 3000 lb ATV/UTV Winch | Canadian Tire . which I can operate from the cockpit. Can anyone see a downside to this idea? I also expect I will need a cable lock of some kind to take the strain off the winch when the sail is up.
Any thought?

You don't say the main takes a lot of force to haul up, just that it is inconvenient with your current setup. Because you must crank up the wire halyard, you have no way of knowing if it would be hard to pull up by hand.

Get rid of the winch and the wire. Use some decent diameter low-stretch rope (spectra or dynema core with a cover for easy handling, about 1/2 inch dia. Odd are your masthead sheave will have a larger groove for line as well as the smaller one for the wire, but even if you need to replace it, this is a well worth the trouble.

In a boat this size you should be able to haul up the sail nearly to the top by hand, no winch, provided you have 1/2 inch dia. halyard, you are pointing upwind and it's not blowing like stink. Couple feet remaining you will use a standard 2 speed winch on the mast. This is very much faster than the reel winch.

You'll want an autopilot, no question, if you are going to single hand or even double hand most of the time. That solves the steering problem and much more.

[waterman46]

Originally Posted by waterman46

You don't say the main takes a lot of force to haul up, just that it is inconvenient with your current setup. Because you must crank up the wire halyard, you have no way of knowing if it would be hard to pull up by hand.

Get rid of the winch and the wire. Use some decent diameter low-stretch rope (spectra or dynema core with a cover for easy handling, about 1/2 inch dia. Odd are your masthead sheave will have a larger groove for line as well as the smaller one for the wire, but even if you need to replace it, this is a well worth the trouble.

In a boat this size you should be able to haul up the sail nearly to the top by hand, no winch, provided you have 1/2 inch dia. halyard, you are pointing upwind and it's not blowing like stink. Couple feet remaining you will use a standard 2 speed winch on the mast. This is very much faster than the reel winch.

You'll want an autopilot, no question, if you are going to single hand or even double hand most of the time. That solves the steering problem and much more.

Quoting my own previous post, but now we know you have a halyard exit at the base of the mast then halyard runs back up outside mast to reel winch on mast. This is very weird and illogical since it adds more friction. I have seen a lot of reel winches but never one rigged like that. Anyway, simply cut a new exit point in your mast (you do have an aluminum mast, right?) a few feet above the reel winch location, maybe just a little higher than your head when standing on deck. Pull out your main halyard from this hole. Install a nice looking piece of hardware to make the exit look good. Then replace the halyard and winch as I wrote earlier. and install a nice piece of hardware to trim the exit hole.

Probably should hear from other HR owners on how their main halyards are rigged, for any other ideas before making changes.

[Nicholson58]

Do what you can to reduce friction
Get rid of the wire rope
Add in a proper winch where it will work best for you
Add also a rope clutch. If you had a rope clutch could you use an existing winch?
Milwaukee 1/2 inch, 28 VDC right angle With 2:1 right angle reduction and winch bit.

[Tillsbury]

replace the wire with dyneema, run it back to the cockpit. I did this on mine and can raise it by hand to within a short distance of the top (20m) no problem, by having a clean free-running track.

[Gin-N-Sonic]

I'm new to this site and finally got the conjones to learn sailing after a friend got me addicted, hence, please excuse my amateur hour question here, wouldn't a Winchrite do the trick?
WinchRite ABT