One of the most useful machines on the boat while under sail is a winch. Non-sailors may not know what a winch is, unless it's on the front of a Jeep to pull a hapless car out of the ditch. Winches are used all over our boat to provide an assist to hauling on lines. In all but the lightest of breezes, it would be impossible to sail the boat without them.
Today I decided to stop neglecting our winches (we have 10 aboard our boat) and start treating them with the respect they deserve. The manufacturer and every sailing expert recommends disassembling them, cleaning all the old grease and dirt out of the innards with paint thinner, re-oiling and re-greasing, replacing worn parts, and re-assembling. All very well and good (and many thanks to you tube for helpful videos), but our winches had been faithfully serving without maintenance for over six years (ten years in some cases).
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| Pretty straightforward so far |
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| The bearings |
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| The gears slide right out - Yuck, this is filthy |
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| A good look at the pawls (springs are inside) |
I confess to having enough apprehension about our winches that I didn't want to do this, lest I put them back together wrong or cause other problems. To replace a winch costs over a thousand dollars, so today was the day to take the bull by the horns and get to it. The gears were so dirty and gummy with old grease it took hours to clean them up. My crafts project for the day took eight hours to do two winches.
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| A job that is hard on our rag inventory |
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| All done... and it works! |
Amazing, a nice snick - snick - snick and it pulls the jib sheet taut!
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