What doesn’t work? Might be obvious but it’s an electric winch so it needs wiring.
I’m curious as to the source of the recommendation, Siva.
It doesn’t look at all like good advice to me.
Winches typically need the line to come up into the bottom of the drum at about a 7-10 degree angle, with the lines then wrapping around clockwise up to the top. Since that means the front winch will send off the line near its top, your line will never feed from there into the back winch at the necessary angle. It’d be more like 30 degrees down instead of seven degrees angle.
This arrangement is bound to create the kind of overlap and jam that the picture shows as either happening or about to happen.
There’s no good way I can think of to make it work – unless the back winch were mounted on a pedestal that raised its bottom to about the height of the first winch. Trying to pull the line down between the winches in order to get the correct entry angle to the back winch would just pull the line off the front winch at a sharp angle that’d cause create jams and friction in front.
In addition, I don’t have an intuitive sense of whether wrapping the line around the front winch helps at all or just hurts. Unless something’s turning the front winch, I’m not sure whether pulling on a line wrapped around it adds mechanical advantage or just creates resistance. The line has resistance on one end from whatever it’s pulling and force on the other end from being pulled. My gut feeling is that what this would make the coils around the first winch do is just squeeze that winch tighter.
Most of the uses I’ve seen of a line running over one winch on the way to another are using the front winch like a very big, expensive turning block. As long as the line isn’t wrapped around the front winch, it will either slide along or the winch will turn with it. I don’t think that helps with pulling the line, but at least it’d be working in the right direction.
If you had both winches properly aligned and could get them turning the line at exactly the same speed, then maaaaybe this arrangement would make the power of the two winches additive. But I’m not even sure of that.
Electric or manual is irrelevant here. The problems above are independent of what’s turning the winches.
-- Bob
Siva,
I have a similar setup on my NS30U. Once the sail is up about 95%, or 1-2 feet from the top, you take the halyard off the electric winch and put it on the self-tailing winch and finish it by hand using a winch handle. You must ensure the rope jammer is closed when raising the sail. You cannot have the halyard on both winches at the same time. Do not try to hoist the sail 100% using the electric winch. I marked my halyard with a black Sharpie felt pen as a visual reference when it is nearing the jammer for full hoist.
Don
But how does it not slip? My electric winch slips.
Siva,
The line on a winch will always slip unless there’s something pulling on it to keep it tightly wrapped around the winch. With a self-tailing winch, the self-tailing mechanism takes care of that. On a regular winch, the job is usually done by a person “tailing” the line (i.e., pulling on it as it comes off the winch).
-- Bob
P.S. Thanks for the explanation of the double set-up, Don. Now it makes sense.
Don is correct. I have a similar setup on my 33.
Siva, you must pull the tail of the halyard hand over hand as the electric winch turns. If you do not hold tension, the drum of the electric winch will slip inside the rope coils.
Without the self-tailing feature you need to tail manually. The size and condition of the line and the tension on the line being brought in will determine how much tailing tension is needed to prevent slipping.
You might look into the possibility of adding the self-tailing option to the winch you have or swap it out for one that has self-tailing.
If you post a diagram of planned changes, I’m sure you’d get some helpful feedback. I’m always in awe of the depth of experience shared on this forum.
Good luck,
Rob…
Winches and capstans have been around for centuries, but self-tailing is a relatively new advancement. A basic winch is a drum, like the forward one in your pair. You turn it (electrically, hydraulicly, or manually while singing like this) and then control the pull by the number of turns you put on it and by how hard you pull on the line as it comes off of the winch. You are just relying on the friction between the line and the drum to advance the line. If you do not pull (tail) the line as it comes off of the winch nothing will happen. If you pull lightly on the line the winch will pull but slip at the same time. This is not necessarily bad, depending on what you are trying to accomplish: it can give you quite a bit of control, allowing you to pull hard, taper off the pulling force, slow down the pull, etc.
We had a capstan (winch) just like a giant version of yours on the tug that I worked on. We were handling it poorly (being enginemen, not bosun mates) and so the craftmaster setup a demonstration for us. He set us up with a 7" line on the capstan with five or six turns and tied to a large dolphin (triple piling). He had one guy hold the line and pull it hard. He ran the 1800HP engine up to full power and that guy could hold back the entire boat just pulling on that line. Then he had the guy ease the line just slightly. The line slipped on the capstan and the boat moved forward slowly. When he had the guy pull harder again, the boat stopped - even with the engine still delivering 1800HP to the screw. He could stop or slip it as much as he liked. The control was amazing. It made a big impression.
When it comes to how to use your setup, don’t use them in tandem like you’ve shown. Don clearly knows how to do it. If you’ve got the clutch closed while raising the sail, as he says, then you will make those three wraps on the winch drum and just keep tension on the halyard to raise the sail by pulling it hand-over-hand as it comes off of the winch. That is called “tailing” the line. If you need to crane your neck and check your progress, just stop tailing for a moment and the halyard will slip on the winch while you are looking, then start tailing again to continue. When you reach your desired stopping point near the top of the mast, stop tailing. The winch will stop pulling and the clutch will prevent the sail from dropping. Then transfer the line to the self-tailing winch and use the crank handle to finish the lift and fine tune the luff tension. It’s different from how my boat is setup, but should work perfectly fine.
Dang, you’ve got some clean windows!
Brian, yes, but that photo was from 5 years ago, and the dodger was brand new. However, they are still looking pretty good. The glass is Strataglass and I try to maintain them with the Strataglass cleaner/polisher product. And I have a canvas window cover when the boat is just sitting at the dock.
Mine are also covered when not in use. Thanks for telling me about the cleaner. I’ll give it a try.
Thanks, Rob. I think now I get it.
