Interesting windlass

More windlass porn. This is from current CL listing in Seattle.

Albina electric drum anchor windlass:

Muir Windlass

My Halvorsen 32 came with a Muir 1200 VRC windlass which has been fantastic! I don't anchor much (maybe 4 times a year) but when I do it never fails me. Power up/power down/freefall/ controlled freefall, etc. One reason it's so dependable (IMO) is that it has Zerck fittings for ease of greasing. 30 seconds with a grease gun and I'm good for another year. All my other windlasses did not have grease fittings. The Muir is an Aussie product and it's as tough as the people down there.

Dave if they had the drum 2 to 2.5 times longer w a pedestal mount and bearing I'd want it. That drum isn't big enough. The motor driving it sure looks big enough though.

Walt you still have a combination rode?

I was thinking the same thing basically.

"wait where do i put the other 175 feet of chain I have" was how it was playing in my mind.

I think that Albina has a 32v motor, the boat has 12v & 32v panel anyway. I was also thinking the drum was too small.

manyboats said:

Walt you still have a combination rode?

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Yep! 20 feet of chain and 200 feet of line. At first, the line I thought I needed was too small & If I pulled hard enough, I could pull the line back through the windlass. A mechanic I have known for years said I need the next size up. He replaced the line and now a D18 Cat couldn't pull it out. (Well. maybe!)

The new (to me) boat has a Maxwell and it has an all chain rode. Since I'm not sure (at this point) what model Maxwell it is, I don't know if it would accept line or not. I will know much more on Tuesday next as that is survey day. I remain a combination rode guy, however.

There is about 350 ft of 5/8 line on the spool, not a lot of break out power at full spool. I will say it is fast system some days I anchor out 10x when looking for fish.

manyboats said:

That drum isn't big enough.

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I would agree unless the boater knew he/she was going to be anchoring in relatively shallow depths all the time. Since one can't tell the spool size from the photo, there may be more chain on the drum than there appears to be.

But if one was always going to be anchoring in 20-30 feet of water, the capacity of the drum may be enough. Partcicularly if one had either more chain or a nylon rode that could be shacked on if more rode was needed.

Marin said:

I would agree unless the boater knew he/she was going to be anchoring in relatively shallow depths all the time. Since one can't tell the spool size from the photo, there may be more chain on the drum than there appears to be.

But if one was always going to be anchoring in 20-30 feet of water, the capacity of the drum may be enough.

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It's all about configuring your boat to perform in its expected environment.

Yep! I like my anchor gear stored on deck too.
Ted

What???
Surprises and unseen events are no more???
But I agree .. basically.

A 300' rode makes for anchoring in 50' of water w almost a 6-1 scope. That should be enough for the southern PNW. Or perhaps further north depending on what one thinks. With a really good anchor that holds very well at a 3-1 scope a 150' rode may be enough.

funangler how much does that winch cost? I like it. I like your combo rode .. heavy on the line.

Ted,
How many guys does it take to run that winch?

Here's two winches (one a dead ringer for the OP) .. to see.

About 2900 dollars for the winch it operators on 12 volt and is called EZ Anchor. I'm happy with the purchase but you have to work with it's limits.

Hi Eric,
One should handle it, maybe with a higher rank ?? to oversee.
Second could be handy if needing to run up on (the "A"word).
The long vertical lever moves crosswise to slide the drive gear
over to power the windless head (prawn traps?).
Ted

It no big deal to add an extra shot of line at the end of the spool if you have to. You can take a couple of wraps around the barrel and use it like a capstan.

The hassle with every reel winch is as line or chain is taken on the diameter increases, reducing the windlass power.

The torque difference on a 3 inch empty shaft vs a 12 in or 18 inch diameter when full is dramatic..

Any thoughts on using " stainless wire rope on a windlass"?

FF said:

The hassle with every reel winch is as line or chain is taken on the diameter increases, reducing the windlass power.

The torque difference on a 3 inch empty shaft vs a 12 in or 18 inch diameter when full is dramatic..

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I made that observation years ago and asked the fishermen about it. The winches are so powerful the torque variation isn't a problem. One operates the hydraulic drum speed valve like the throttle in your car. You adjust the speed according to you want and the rode comes up the way you want. The only difference is the different load on the motor from beginning to end. But this has an equalizer involved. The drum is small dia at the start and the whole rode anchor and all is out there hang'in on the winch/bow roller so low "gearing" (high torque) is useful. When most of the rode is aboard the boat the dia on the drum is large and torque is lower but there is much less to lift. One imperfection is the lack of a "level wind". I've seen some interesting solutions (partial) like rods w various holes to stick the end into to act as a lever "over here or over there".

Here are some pics of anchor winches on fishing boats in Craig Alaska. Note that all of them have larger or much larger chain next to the anchor. Many are actually studded chain ... very heavy. They appear to be all chain but many, perhaps even most have some or a lot of nylon line under the chain.

The load on a windlass remains pretty much the same all the way through the retrieve until the anchor itself starts being lifted. If one is anchored in 30' of water with all-chain rode, the windless will be lifting the same amount of chain-- more or less 30' plus the chain between the surface of he water and the bow roller--- all the way through the retrieve because the boat will keep moving forward until it's over the anchor. So the load on the windless doesn't get less throughout the retrieve.

We can hear this with our windlass. It zips along at its normal speed as it lifts the chain between the boat and the bottom as the boat moves forward, pulled by the weight of the chain as it's picked up off the bottom, until we're over the anchor. We usually have to stop the retrieve at that point and break the anchor out with the boat. When we resume the retrieve we can hear the windless working a bit harder even though the retieval speed remains the same.

That's interesting Marin. I rarely need to break out an anchor w the boat. You must back down on the anchor really hard. Don't think I've ever needed to use the boat to break out the XYZ even after the gales. I've never used a Rocna so maybe it's just a sticky anchor Haha. I think you're just over setting it. What rpm do you set the anchor? Perhaps it's deep because the roll bar dosn't impeded penetration much at all haha. I cut my RB completely off. It looks a little naked. I've got a substute planed for the RB. I think I've learned a lot about how anchors work in the last month or two. I'm going to use the Supreme w/o the RB for awhile to see if it will refuse to set at times. Then I'll attach my mods for the RB substitute and see how much better it sets.

Eric-- We almost always use the boat to break out our anchor. I don't mean an extreme effort, but the anchor is almost always in the bottom firm enough to start bogging down the windlass. As soon as that starts to happen we stop the retrieve and break out the anchor with the boat. Most of the time it doesn't take much effort but there have been plenty of times when we had to work at it a bit.

As to the power we use to set the anchor, it's not much, We set the anchor initially with only the inertia of the boat drifting slowly backwards in the wind or current, or if neither one is present we use a momentary shot of reverse on one engine at idle to get the boat moving backwards prior to our deploying the anchor and rode off the boat.

So far the anchor has never failed to dig in and stop the boat with no assistance from us. Usually the anchor stops the boat so suddenly that the boat yaws around a bit on the end of the chain even at the slow speed it's drifting backwards. We've had other rollbar anchor users tell us their anchors often do the same thing. Which makes sense given the way the rollbar anchor works.

After the boat has stopped and moved back forward as the chain sinks back down we engage one engine in reverse gear at idle (650 rpm) until it pulls the catenary out of the chain again. We line up a couple of objects on shore, usually trees, to make sure we are not moving backwards, and then we shift back into neutral. We usually repeat this once to make sure the anchor's staying put and that's it. We do not add any power above idle at any time during all this and we only use one engine.

I'm not sure where this notion that a rollbar anchor can't dig itself deep comes from. Perhaps it's just another armchair theory. I've seen video of rollbar anchors digging into a bottom and disappearing completely from sight as the pull was continued. Obviously it's not going to do this eery time in every kind of bottom.

The times we have found the anchor to be very solidly "parked" in the bottom is when we've been at anchor for a day and a night or more. Between the wind, the waves, and the current shifts the boat usually does some tugging on the rode and I expect the anchor squirms its way in a little deeper over time.

I'm sure that in a denser bottom--- hard mud for example--- the rollbar could limit how deep the anchor goes, although rollbar anchors seem to hold just fine in these kinds of bottoms. But in sand or "normal" mud, from the video and photos I've seen over the years the rollbar anchors seem intent on burrowing to China. Unless they're IN China in which case they burrow in this direction.

We don't dive on our anchor and the water here is not clear enough to see the bottom in typical anchoring depths. So I have no idea what our anchor is doing down there. I can only judge the anchor's behavior in each anchoring situation from what the boat does when the anchor sets and the effort required to pull the anchor out of the bottom when we want to retrieve it.

"Any thoughts on using " stainless wire rope on a windlass"?"

NO stretch is the hassle , which means like a tight chain 100% of shock loads are passed to the anchor system..

A snubber is simpler to rig with chain ,hard with steel cable so the windlass will need to be robust enough to anchor the boat to.

Usually the windlass is only sized to recover the anchor gear., not to anchor or pull out the buried anchor .

A Killet (weight on the cable) would help reducing shock loads , but must be set and recovered each time.

Fish guys that want to anchor and fish find a reel winch very handy , bit the crew is usually on deck working and the engine is operating

.For a cruiser out of coral areas , nylon and a bit of chain are probably the norm.

I'm wondering how many on the forum use the windlass to pull the boat over the anchor when retrieving.

These were taken from 2 different articles on the Internet but there are many more!

FF,
Good points especially fishermen. But you are referring to sport fishermen but it's true of commercial fishermen too. While talking about anchoring w a commercial fisherman in Alaska he said "Eric I don't have time to anchor like that" ... referring to my talk about the kind of anchoring we all think is the norm. This comment came from a fisherman fairly new to fishing and he anchored more like how we do. Another fisherman w decades of fishing under his keel said about our "new" guy "and here comes _____ let'in out a hundred feet of rode swing'in all over the place". The real heavy anchors and chain is to keep the fish boat right above the anchor. There's quite a few fishermen in Alaska and only so many places to anchor ... and they have their favorite spots. So they tend to pull in, stop the boat and dump their rode overboard. The chain attached to their bow is vertical. Most all the time there's almost no wind so "holding power"is not even a tiny thought. Old Deckhand mentioned cable and being from Sitka I assume it's for deeper anchoring.

Marin,
Dosn't sound like your'e over setting at all. Why your anchor gets hung up and requires the boat to break it out may be beyond me. And our methods aren't much different. The biggest difference in our anchoring is ground tackle .... the chain/line issue.

Perhaps you anchor where there is enough wave action to work your anchor down deeper that has been my experience. In Alaska I almost never anchored under the influence of wave action. Perhaps that's going to be a complication of my anchoring in Washington this summer. Not worried one twit about that but I am worried about crowded anchorages. If my worry is great enough my anchoring at short scope will continue and the possibility of using all or mostly chain will increase.

But the anchor soaking from wave action is all I can think of to explain your need to break out the anchor so much. However knowing that could be an educational experience.

We always use the windlas to pull the boat up over the anchor but we do it in increments. We run the windlas until it pulls a lot of the catenary out of the chain and then stop the windlas and let the weight of the chain sinkng back to the bottom start the boat moving forward. After it's moved up some we pull up the chain with the windlas until it's lifted more off the bottom and then stop while the chain pulls the boat up some more.

Then we simply pull chain off the bottom as the boat glides forward until we're over the anchor. Then we break it out with the boat if need be and haul it up. The windlass is never subjected to much strain at all which we figure mames life easier for the gears.

Eric-- The anchor is never hung up on the bottom, it just digs itself in deep and/or hard enough to need breaking out. The couple of times we've actually had our anchor hang up on something on the bottom we've simply backed it out with the trip line and then hauled it up.

Codger2 said:

I'm wondering how many on the forum use the windlass to pull the boat over the anchor when retrieving.

These were taken from 2 different articles on the Internet but there are many more!

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I always use the engine but have plenty of friends with bigger boats that use the windlass

funangler said:

About 2900 dollars for the winch it operators on 12 volt and is called EZ Anchor. I'm happy with the purchase but you have to work with it's limits.

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I thought hard about one of those. They even have a new model that had more capacity.

The only thig that kept me from buying it was that it wouldn't fit on my anchor pulpit and I didn't want to jethro up my boat with a huge plate beneath the windlass to make it fit.

Otherwise great looking windlass and would have bought it if it had fit!

I have a very small boat and even smaller winch as in capstan. I pull the boat along w the capstan in spurts like Marin says but for a different reason. I pause the capstan to allow me a moment to lay the line down in the rode box to my satisfaction then pull in some more but w all line the weight of the rode dosn't help much. But it dosn't take much for my capstan to pull the catenary out of the line either. But into wind or current Chris puts the transmission into gear for a second or so at intervals to keep significant load off the capstan. The downside of my capstan is that the line tries to run over to the port side of the drum and up and over the edge of the drum. Need to align the capstan more carefully or get a saddle type drum. Probably the drum as the alignment if fixed through the bolts and holes drilled in the deck.

So in answer to the question of using the capstan or the boat engine to move the boat to a position directly over the anchor it's the capstan baring wind and/or current. My little planetary geared capstan is amazingly powerful.

I have to break out my Manson supreme most of the time. I had to do the same with the Rocna prior to that. I don't have a windlass. I do power set the anchor. Maybe its too much, but then again, what is "too much"? I sleep well at night and rarely bother to get up when I hear the wind pickup. (Now, horns sounding in the anchorage at 3am has me out of the bunk, dressed and topside like someone yelling FIRE).