Anyone have a Lofrans Tigres or Cayman horizontal windlass?

Horizontal Windlass

Hello all, This may be a tad off subject, but I have a question about using a horizontal windlass. On the boat I just bought a couple months ago, I have mixed chain and line.

When retrieving the anchor, starting with the line on the left side, how does one transition to chain on the right side? Do you tie off the line and line the chain up with the right side (is that called a wildcat?). Sorry, if this is a silly question with incorrect terminology.

Many will handle the transition on the chain wheel side alone, pulling the line with the lugs that pull the chain. Of course the chain wheel is designed specifically for this (most of the time), so moving the line from the other side of the windlass is not necessary.

The link of rope to chain has to be a splice to pass through the chain wheel, a shackle won't pass.

I suspect almost nobody does a manual transition, opting for an all chain rode instead. The chain has to enter the chain wheel to begin pulling it, you wouldn't want to wind the chain onto the capstan to get enough length.

That is a great question, and I am looking forward to hearing the answers. Might need to start a new thread to get it going.

When retrieving the anchor, starting with the line on the left side, how does one transition to chain on the right side? Do you tie off the line and line the chain up with the right side (is that called a wildcat?). Sorry, if this is a silly question with incorrect terminology.[/QUOTE]
I have the same question for our new to us boat. On my windlass set up (Lofrans like post # 21) the starboard rode is all chain and set up to retrieve on the "chain" side of the windlass. The port side anchor is a combination chain/rope rode. Will the rope side of the windlass retrieve the chain portion as well with a "turn" around the gypsy? Or is some sort of transition as described above necessary?

tegdesign said:

When retrieving the anchor, starting with the line on the left side, how does one transition to chain on the right side?

Click to expand...

We eliminated the need to do this by using all-chain rode. Not really the answer you were looking for, I know....

We don't see any advantage on our boat to using a combination rode, we see a number of advantages to using an all-chain rode, and the manufacturer of our anchor strongly recommends using all-chain with this particular anchor.

We do use line for our anchor trip-line however, so when we use the trip line we haul it in and back the anchor out using the line gypsy on the left side of the windlass. We feed the trip line thorugh the port bow hawse and then to the line gypsy.

Were we faced with the situation you have, we would simply lift the bitter end of the chain over and place it in the wildcat, feed the remaining line down the hawsepipe into the chain locker, and carry on retrieving the anchor.

In Mexico on our sailboat we used a rope/chain splice. I inspected the line and chain each year and re-spliced the connection. We very seldom used the 3/4 line as usually 150' of chain was enough.

On my new Tigres I opted for all chain to 275' + 150 rope hoping that I will almost never have to use the rope.
However the previous windlass was a Cayman, the smaller cousin of the Tigres.

I did pull the rope on the drum untill the chain appeared and was almost long enough to transfer to the wildcat. I would then hold the chain feeding the rope and the start of the chain into the hole. If all went well it was not bad. If all did not go well it was a HEAVY job.
Note however, I had a secondary roller welded to the drum side of the pulpit that was halfway between the main roller and the rope drum. That secondary roller also split the angle between the main roller and the drum and it was two to three inches higher than the main roller and the windlass drum. The rope angled over quite well to the drum. That setup worked well for many years with a few hiccups untill last year when i had serious back trouble.

I also did have handy a 1/2 line with a grab hook to pull slack and hold the chain tied to the cleat to give me enough slack in the rope and chain to get it started down the hole. If the wind was up and the boat pulling hard on the rode that extra line made transferring possible. Only once or twice did I really need it.

Unfortunately i do not have any pictures available,