One of those moments when you go

[powerskipper]

"Oh Sh*t"

You anchor up, have a nice cuper and even a biscuit, and you then get ready to up anchor, while your walking/climbing up to the fordeck, your thinking to yourself, just a button push and a few hand signals to the helmsman and you will be under way.

So you look were the anchor is and signal to the helm to move the boat to slacken the chain so you can press your button and start raising the anchor.

can you guess what comes next?.

you press the button ,

and nothing happens, so you press harder, still nothing,

Ah ask helm if windlass is on, that what it is you say to your self, it will work in a min.


Helm says yes it is on..........................




Thats the Oh sh*t moment.


So you have to now pull up, by hand, 25 meter of chain.


going to need another cuper after this!!!!!





Have you had any recently.?

 

[capnsensible]

All too often! Sadly, the broken bit often has Lewmar written on it.

 

[Elessar]

"Oh Sh*t"

So you have to now pull up, by hand, 25 meter of chain.
?

shall I tell you where the overload breaker is before or after you've hauled it in?


But I've had a few oh sh*t moments over the last few weeks.

stepping in an inch of diesel in the aft cabin 2 days before my first ever charter

after about 16 hours of work to take out repair and refit the tank realising it was still leaking (at least wiggo got the charter)

losing an engine coming into cowes in a blow (the power steering one - that tank again filter full of crud after being disturbed)

and yesterday when the 1 engine was going astern even though the lever was in forward.

 

[powerskipper]

shall I tell you where the overload breaker is before or after you've hauled it in?




Know that one.LOL

sorry you are having problems, It can be a steep learning curve boating.LOL

 

[oldsaltoz]

Time to leave, so I headed forward and after the engines were started (40+ Foot Cut) is stepped on the up button and the chain started disappearing under the winch cover through a slot in the front,

After a short time the winch slowed a little, I put this down to the fact that the anchor was now hanging off the bottom.

The the winch slowed a lot and the bow dipped, I first thought that cant be right, but the chain was bar tight.

After doing a few runs over the top and a couple of loops the front of the cat lifted, however it was only lifted a small amount. Seems whatever we hung up on was now still hanging off the anchor but at least off the bottom.

Just across the between the two islands was a nice sandy beach and tide was rising so we decided to beach her and sort the problem.

Turned out to be huge Mushroom shaped coral outcrop, luckily it dropped off soon after it contacted the beach.

I finished winching and decided to have a look at the winch, half expecting some heat under box.

What I found was a stock standard starter motor connected to a reduction box with a fan belt, the belt acts as a clutch in that it slips if the load is too much, I suspect we might have sunk by the bow before it even looked like slipping if huge lump of coral is any guide.

Anyone else ever come across one of these? apparently in use for many years and never a problem.

.