Like Dirkdig, our breakers are in the electrical panel for the winches and outside forward locker under the middle
hatch just inside to the right.
Regarding the electric winches. Thought you might be interested in a post I did on the
lagoon owners yahoo group! We now an E-Stop for the whole system designed and built to install in the fall!
On May 28, 2012, at 12:29 PM, Scott Mcauley wrote:Runaway electric winches!
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Ok, so I heard about it, read about it in the Ocean Navigator in an article by Nigel Calder, and then experienced it!
The mainsheet winch went out of control and would not shut off! My brother and I were sailing to
Antigua and put a second reef into the
mainsail. As I stepped on the mainsheet button to sheet in the main the winch went into high speed and would not shut down. I had to react quickly by taking the sheet out of the self tailer and letting the drum spin while my brother Mark ran below to kill the
power to the winch. We had reviewed the main shut off breakers before we left
Grenada, (thank god) so Mark knew were to go and actually ended up turning off all the breakers. A very dangerous situation for sure especially if someone is going up the rig and this happens!
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I assumed it was the floor switch but it turned out to be the
control box itself. I think that the high
gear switch fused together for some reason. I could still use the low
gear switch and then reversed the
power cables which gave me high gear again, if that all makes sense.
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No big deal switching out the
control box and we have adopted a new sailing policy to not leave the
sheets or halyards loaded on the winches in the self tailer and use the jammers instead.
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The big problem from my perspective is that this is a very dangerous situation if a winch goes out of control and it is just me or my wife on
deck. You have to let the sheet go free, leave the flybridge, and run to the electrical panel to kill the power to the winch. There are five breakers controlling the winches so we will need to memorize which one goes where so we could do this even in the dark.
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I think a better plan is to put in a kill switch near the
helm station on the flybridge to kill the power to all the winches instantly. Something you could even push with your foot or toe if your hands are busy controlling the lines on the runaway winch.
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Anyone have experience with this or have some thoughts on the best way to do this?
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Thanks for the help!!!
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