A windlass is the winch or equipment at the front of the boat that you’re going to be using for lowering and raising the anchor. On every boat it’s going to be slightly different so there’s things that we need to investigate before we start using it.
Key Features
What Powers a Windlass
The first one it is power to the windlass, what actually powers it. So we’ll have a look down below and we’ll be looking for first of all a breaker that will trip if the windlass ever gets overloaded. And we’re also looking for an activation switch which will usually find on the main panel. Once we found those we can go ahead and test the windlass to see if it works without the engine running. Because this is going to be good to know if you need your engine or not to run the windlass. So we’ll go forwards and we’ll press the button to see if the chain pays out at all when we press it. If it doesn’t then we need to fire up the engine. So let’s fire up the engine and see if that makes a difference. If it does we now know that we need the engine to actually make the windlass go down, good to know if you ever need to anchor out and hurry.
Windlass Control Buttons
The next thing we’re looking at other controls up front by the windlass, how do we actually activate it going up and down. Will either have a remote unit which you can work by hand or you’re going to have buttons on the deck. If you find you have a boat that requires the engine running to activate the windlass then you think about that in terms of what if I need to deploy my anchor and I can’t start my engine. So we need another way of doing that and many witnesses will come with a brake. If you release the brake that will allow the chain to run freely and of course deploy your anchor in a hurry. The other thing to remember about where the windlass is of course is as it comes back up from the seabed the anchor and chain is very likely to have a lot of silt and mud on it. If that silt and mud gets into your windlass it can then affect the performance of your brake.
And the very last thing to remember about the windlass is the when it’s in operation it’s not a very forgiving piece of machinery. So if you get a toe or a finger or anything else caught up in there while it’s working it’s going to end very badly. So please keep yourself well clear of the windlass. And that’s how to go about using the windlass when we’re cruising.
Horizontal vs. Vertical Windlasses: Pros & Cons
Today we’re going to talk about the differences between horizontal windlass versus vertical windlass. One is a horizontal windlass. You know that because the main shaft is going horizontally across the windlass. An advantage of one looks like this is everything is up on deck the motor is housed inside the housing, and so you don’t take up any room in your anchor locker and easy installation.
Another – is a vertical. In a vertical windlass the shaft is mounted vertically now, where the motor is kept below deck in the anchor locker. An advantage of a vertical windlass is the fact that you get a 180 degree wrap around the chain wheel. It works extremely well for rope and chain combination, anchor systems and the sprung loaded finger will keep the rope pushed into the chain wheel so it can grab onto it and bring it all in. On a verdict, on a horizontal windlass you have the chain, you’re only getting about a ninety degree wrap so you’re only getting three pockets to hold the chain and there are really designed for chain only anchor systems versus which works quite well with rope and chain. You can buy a vertical windlass with the capstan up on top and that gives you some extra equipment up forward to wrap a line around to bring in maybe it’ll work independently of the chain wheel and so you can bring in a crab pot or pull in your dock lines or anything like that. Both windlasses operate power up and power down and went these windless will also freefall to let your anchor deploy very very quickly.
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