Ideal Windlass on the new (to us) Persistent Lady II

[sher9016]

Thanks to all. I have reached out to Ideal and they will have someone who can help me with the conversion in the office Tuesday. I agree, it is a very good piece of kit; and looks like I will be able to convert to a key fob with up and down functions, exactly like I had installed on P L shortly before we lost her. We were in 50 kt's wind and 12 - 15 meter seas for several days (had a five day window that looked good and was, but it was a twelve day trip and it went south quickly.). We're about 100 milesSE of Kalamata when the rigging let go/ was new, installed in NY before we headed over. Could not Moter because only had 70 gallons in tanks that held 180 gallons; boat heeled, sucked air, motor died. Bleed and restarted, same thing happened again and again till batteries went down. At that point was not in command and being pushed toward the rocks, forecast was for storm to continue, so we asked for tow, but could only get freighter in that weather, captain said half his crew was too seasick to get out of bed and he had great difficulty controlling his boat. He dropped us off in Gibraltar and we moved on from there.

[tartansail]

As SkiprJohn said, most of these windlasses have a clutch release to let the anchor down. Ours has two holes at the top which take a steel rod that slides through and allows you to loosen and control the clutch. Picture of the windlass is below. We didn't have a clue what the 18" steel rod stored in the nav table was for until we asked the PO how to let the anchor down.

Even though you're converting to two way power, it's good to know how to release and manage the clutch in case you ever have to anchor without any power.