I was trying to extract a
photo from my files for a post in another thread and came across this image. I have probably posted the image, and maybe even the story, somewhere on the forum before however here goes.
Years ago I was in the Hinchenbrook
Passage and went to pull the
anchor and the
winch would not hoist. I could hear the
motor running but no rotation above
deck occurred.
On disassembling it I found that the brass pinion
gear had completely worn out. Pondering on this I did a rough calculation on how much
work the
winch had done and found it was actually very little because the
boat had spent most of it's life
day sailing from a marina.
No problem, I'll just buy another one. On finally recovering from the shock and horror occasioned by the
price in the catalogue I decided there was no way I was going to spend that much
money replacing something that transient.
So I decided to use the
parts from the deceased, vertical shaft
windlass and an industrial worm drive
gearbox to manufacture a horizontal shaft
windlass. Horizontal because I thought not having the 90 degree bend hawsepipe might allow a bit more galvanizing to stay on the
anchor chain.
A couple of days on my little lathe and a couple of trips to a
salvage yard produced the winch in the image. I used the
DIY winch for about five years before I
sold the
boat, which
sale occurred about five years ago, and as far as I know the winch is still going strong.
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