Anchor windlass

P

Paddingtonbear

Well-Known Member
Joined
25 May 2011
Messages
351
Visit site
I now need to research anchor windlasses. Boat 33' wooden motor boat, quite heavy (9/10 tonnes?), used East Coast, Thames Estuary, none fitted at present. Currently rebuilding front deck. I note from replies on my anchor thread that an electric windlass needed. Is this for certain as they seem to be mental money and of course I would need to re do all the charging electrics to cope with the extra elektrickery needed. What would be wrong with a nice Simpson Lawrence and suitable anchor rode.? Also I don't envisage much anchoring in any event as I would be more likely to take ground.
 
You're probably going to be using at least a 35lbs anchor on chain. It wouldn't have to be very deep water before retrieving that would be quite hard work. Not impossible with a few 'old hand' tricks, but still hard work. The safety issue is that this 'hard work' colours your judgement when you're not really happy with how the anchor's set and know deep down you should pull it up and set it again, but you can't face the work.

So whilst a windlass is desirable (if not essential), it doesn't have to be electric. A lot of the time you can recover most of the chain hand over hand only using the windlass when necessary. The Lofrans Royal is ubiquitous is this roll, but even better is if you find an old secondhand SL Seatiger, for which spares are again available (at a price).
 
The Lofrans Royal is the manual one used as a comparison in the YM tests. I spoke to Chris Beeson about his efforts in using it, he gave up after a third of the pull that the electric ones were doing - he said his exhaustion shown in the video was not simulated, he was knackered. I had one many years ago, never again. Recovery of chain was so slow that I gave up using it, hauled by hand instead. I was a lot younger then.

Another of its problems, shared with all horizontal types, is that on every tack one of us would have to walk forward to disentangle the lazy genoa sheet, which inevitably caught around the windlass.
 
This is a windlass for a guy who says he's not going to anchor very much and is worried about cost and complexity of an electric windlass. Therefore a manual one is an option and as I said, there are compromises including pulling in the slack chain hand over hand will be quicker. But the Royal is then quite capable of applying enough force to break out even a modern style 15kg anchor. If that's only 1/3rd of what the electric ones can generate, then in my experience they are producing 66% they don't need.

If something cheaper and simpler will do the job well enough, why spend more going for a capability that's not needed just because some journalist has drawn of nice graph of his results for his article.


PS: A length of shock cord stretched over the top between the toe rails will keep the genoa sheets off it.
 
TimBennet said:
You're probably going to be using at least a 35lbs anchor on chain. It wouldn't have to be very deep water before retrieving that would be quite hard work. Not impossible with a few 'old hand' tricks, but still hard work. The safety issue is that this 'hard work' colours your judgement when you're not really happy with how the anchor's set and know deep down you should pull it up and set it again, but you can't face the work.

So whilst a windlass is desirable (if not essential), it doesn't have to be electric. A lot of the time you can recover most of the chain hand over hand only using the windlass when necessary. The Lofrans Royal is ubiquitous is this roll, but even better is if you find an old secondhand SL Seatiger, for which spares are again available (at a price).
Click to expand...

+1 ......
We bought a second hand SL Anchorman manual windlass for £100
- We only anchor a few times per year
- I prefer to recover by hand whenever possible
- Good to know we have the windlass if necessary
- Don't have to worry about electrical installlation
 
Thanks for your replies. How about this? View attachment 21756utilising a modern 12.5/15kg anchor.
Take the point about hard work but it will cost something like £2000 to avoid it and I would rather put that into boat. In any case it a glitzy chrome number would look out of place on a classsic wooden boat.
 
The OP says he'll anchor only occasionally, and on the E coast/Thames estuary, so presumably mostly in shallow water. Under those criteria I'd say an electric windlass, whilst useful (esp if single-handed) is an inessential luxury for anyone hale and half-fit.
 
I got one

Paddingtonbear said:
Thanks for your replies. How about this? View attachment 21756utilising a modern 12.5/15kg anchor.
Take the point about hard work but it will cost something like £2000 to avoid it and I would rather put that into boat. In any case it a glitzy chrome number would look out of place on a classsic wooden boat.
Click to expand...
I brought one off ebay, not fitted it yet because I need to make a water tight self draining chain locker. The one you have is a different hand to mine
I think your right re not going for fancy expensive gear that if you lose power wont be any help

cheers
mick
 
vyv_cox said:
No it won't. Do you think I didn't try it?
Click to expand...

Well, I've sailed on lot on this boat over the last three years. It's hard to imagine a foredeck with more things to snag on including the worst designed mooring 'bits' imaginable and a forehatch that can trap a sheet.

But a combination of keeping some tension on the genoa sheets when we tack and some judicial use of shock cord has solved any problems when conditions would make getting a snag a real pain. So personally I wouldn't spend an extra £1500 on a little used electric windlass because it's less like to get snagged. My ingenuity can work wonders for £1500.
 
TimBennet said:
So personally I wouldn't spend an extra £1500 on a little used electric windlass because it's less like to get snagged. My ingenuity can work wonders for £1500.
Click to expand...

We found that ditching the Lofrans Royal and replacing it with a good electric windlass transformed our use of the boat. Whereas previously we would avoid anchoring as much as possible, messing about with the kedge as a 'lunch hook' and all the other dodges, once we had no concerns about hauling the chain and 35 lb anchor by hand we were anchoring whenever we felt like it, often many times per day.

My windlass is set far further back than yours, and is thus much more likely to be snagged. I agree that there are ways of avoiding it but it was always a load of hassle.
 
The OP has a motor boat, so any comment about genoa sheets is a red herring.
I have been sailing our present boat for six years now. The Lofrans Tigress (horizontal shaft) windlass is mounted well forward, and has never fouled a sheet. It all depends on your deck layout.
If the OP doesn't expect to do much anchoring, and has better things to do with the money, he would be better with a manual windlass. Simple, reliable, and relatively cheap.
 
A friend of ours used his wife as a windlass (pun not intended) for many years on a Sadler 32 with a 35 Lb CQR, on the East Coast mainly. She is reasonably well-built but no muscle-woman and they seemed to get by without him having to help most of the time, so it is possible.

On the other hand, our experience was more like vyv cox and we also found that an electric windlass completely changed out attitude to anchoring.
"I think we've ended up a bit near that other boat"
"No problem, we'll up anchor and move a bit over there".
 
snooks said:
For those who haven't seen the video to accompany YM's group test of windlasses in the Nov issue. Here it is
Click to expand...

But why ever did the test not cover the ability of the various windlasses to handle rope & chain rodes? This is a minefield for the potential windlass purchaser if he has to use such a rode.
 
TimBennet said:
That looks like a SL555 Sea Tiger (as far as I can see from that picture). If it's in working order, then that's one of the best manual windless made.

A guy up in Glasgow has the tooling for this, so spares are available, but not cheap.
Click to expand...

That isn't a SL555 but you are correct. The SL555 is a fantastic manual windlass. We had one on our last boat. We had 30m of 8mm chain and a 25kg spade anchor. It had no problem breaking out the spade and hauling in the whole length of chain even with my wife on the lever. Powerful and a pleasure to use
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Share this page

Top