Sprengler winch bits

[zoidberg]

I see ads for these - around £40 - which utilise a cordless drill to drive a sheet winch.

My parsimonious nature queries whether a pinch of 'PBO' magic dust sprinkled onto a cheap old manual winch handle, with a bit of bodging and welding, might not do much the same.

Thoughts?

 

[Stemar]

A simple adapter would wind in the slack fine, but I reckon you'd need some serious reduction gearing to tighten the genny sheet for sailing hard on the wind if there's enough breeze to do it

 

[jwilson]

The winch bits are just hex to winch star adaptors. I have two quite powerful cordless drills but I doubt even the better one could winch in the last of the genoa sheet to windward. That is on a typical production boat where the winch sizes are selected more by cost to the boat manufacturer rather than ideally sized for power. The 40s I have are JUST enough power for my aging arms to slowly get the last bit in in low gear.

 

[Chiara’s slave]

A simple adapter would wind in the slack fine, but I reckon you'd need some serious reduction gearing to tighten the genny sheet for sailing hard on the wind if there's enough breeze to do it

I use one, though not for the jib sheets. Mostly for the folding mechanism. That isn’t heavy, but doing both floats and the main halyard is just huge hard work right at the beginning of a sail. I have a makita right angle drill, this bastard here Amazon.co.uk
I bought it second hand from Cash Converters for £105 with a 5AH battery though. If ypu think it won’t have enough torque for your genny, they do a 36 volt version The laugh is because this one requires a 2 hand grip and a proper seaman’s brace position to use it. It woukd definitely wind our jib in if asked, which though not large, and has Andersen 40 2 speed winches, operates in very high apparent wind. I use it on the main halyard sometimes, cos that is just a steady load of maybe 40kg, and being 2:1, it’s a 30 metre pull.