karver winches

[gertha]

Has anyone experience of Karver winches.
Good ship Gertha is in need of a couple of upgrades in the winch department.
The Karver KPW 130 has the power, size and ratios. From a cost point of view is no worse than equivalent Lewmar 58 and will be a better fit.
As a fair lump of hard earned will have to be dispatched to pay for new toy it would be good to have any feedback available for what is a relatively obscure product.
Simon

 

[Ingwe]

Karver bought Pontos out a couple of years ago and brought their products into the Karver brand so you will find a lot more reviews if you google "Pontos winches".

When they first came out I bought a pair of Pontos winches (from what would now be called the "Extra Speed / KSW" range) as primaries and was very impressed at how much easier they make tacking, they looked to be well made and still looked as new after three years, but I sold the boat about 2 years ago so cannot comment on longer term reliability.

You haven't said if you are looking at Primary or Halyard winches, but if it is primary's I would think about the KSW range as well because they may be designed for speed, but they also have a lot more power than a standard 2 speed winch in their lowest gear.

 

[GrahamD]

I used to co-own a company that we set up to market and import Pontos winches into the UK. Sadly when Pontos were bought out by Karver they already had a distributor in the UK so they had no need of our services but I can tell you about our experiences.

I think that you can buy the Karver winches with confidence. The Pontos designs and engineering proved robust during the four years that we sold them. The only engineering fault we had on warranty, (which has now been corrected by re-designing the ring) , was that a small percentage of drive rings on the Grinder 40s fractured under heavy use. We never had any warranty issues with the bigger Grinders. I can't remember any warranty claims with the Trimmers - the only issue we had reported was excessive wear in a pair of Trimmer 52 winches used as primary winches on a big Swan. It transpired that these had been wrongly oriented when installed as primary winches so the winch drum was not pushed correctly onto the drive gear by the load. This installation requirement is common to all winches which have one drive gear, but the Trimmers were so powerful they chewed up the internal gears as they continued to operate under load.

The fast winches (Pontos Grinders , now the Extra Speed KSW range) proved really popular with short handed sailors especially for winched mainsheet systems, primary winches for tacking genoas, gybing asymmetric, and as halyard winches. They have a good track record of use with the Class 40 short handed boats with many Atlantic crossings.

The Trimmer winches (now KPW winches) are a real alternative to electric winches, and at far less overall cost. I have Trimmer 40s on my Marcon 34 and they have transformed how my wife and I sail the boat. Both of us can now easily trim the genoa going upwind while sitting or kneeling alongside the winch - there is no longer any need for me to stand over the winch with one foot outside the cockpit, using two hands to wind in the last few inches of sheet. Because the winches are so powerful it is really important to supervise crew when they first use the winches; winching is so easy so crew need to look up and not winch too hard, other wise they could easily damage a sheet or sail. Similarly it is important to use the winch only for what it is intended for , i.e. trimming sails. Although the KPW 130 has a final ratio of 130:1, it has the same maximum working load of a winch of similar dimensions e.g. 1300kg. e.g. They should not be used to try to winch off a boat that is aground

The Compact winches are the small 2 speed winches and were proving really popular especially on sub 30ft boats as primary winches and on other boats as halliard winches.

I don't have any connection with Karver now, but the winches are great products which deserve to succeed. It's just such a shame that the original Pontos company could not continue to trade carrying the amount of debt they incurred when developing the winches .