I love my winches. Like a trusted companion, they have been with me through thick and thin and have always performed for me when I needed them. They are a little old, like their owner, but they are strong, well cared for, and with regular maintenance, in no danger of wearing out. However, they have just one problem, and it’s a big one.
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Neat!
I always just covered the tails with polyester covers to match the existing winches and clutches (not genoa and spin sheets–they don’t commonly go through clutches, except on some of today’s over-clutched boats), but this certainly saves a lot of bulk, particularly with the spin sheets.
I have the lathe and skills, I just never considered this surgery. I think it is because I like the feel of the fat lines in my hands and find the fat tails easier to haul by hand during tacks and jibes.
But very cool.
For those of us on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake without those skills, it is getting more and more difficult to find the old machinist who can seemingly take on projects like this with aplomb. It is a dying art that is being replaced by CAD/CAM machines that cost a fortune to buy and hire. This looks like a project that some enterprising techy could take on and produce on demand with 3D printing once the design work is done. I think that 3D scanners might even be good enough now to avoid the laborious and error-prone process of hand-design.
Whaddya think?
Why not? A year ago I would have argued FDM printing wouldn’t be strong enough for the application, but I’m seriously impressed with some of the new materials, PETG CF (carbon fiber filled) in particular is my go-to material these days. I hope to address 3D printing boat parts in a future article, so stand by.
I’ve been searcing the Internet for a solution for this exact model winch with no sucess…until today! This is the kind of PS content that keeps the fleet running for the rest of us.
Get lines with a larger diameter or new winches.
A perfectly viable solution. It’s nice to have options.
Backing up a step here, you say “Our new 1/2-inch (12 mm) genoa sheets significantly outperform our old 5/8 inch (16 mm) polyester sheets.” Can you explain in what way the smaller lines outperform the larger ones (setting aside the issue of new vs old)? To me it seems the smaller lines would be less comfortable to handle.
By performance I am referring to strength and stretch resistance. A hi-mod 1/2” line beats a 5/8” polyester in both these categories. You are not the first to mention the comfort factor in larger line.