I own a Hunter 366 and would like to install an electric windlass. Any suggestions or experience with doing that on a boat with a shallow anchor locker? Suggested type of electric windlass? How to power it (starter battery, house bank, dedicated battery)? Anything will help. Thanks.
Electric Windlass
- Thread starter Joe Papagni
- Start date
This is a write up of our installation which I did a few years ago. The windlass is probably not applicable but the wiring section may be of some help. Also check out the archives as you may find something useful in there.
I too am looking to install a windlass at some point on my 1983 Hunter 31. I finally got around to taking a picture of the anchor locker. What do you think of a vertical windlass like this:
mounted towards the front of the locker extending through the hatch.
If I have it mounted on an aluminum riser so that it protrudes through a hole in the front of the hatch, and I remove the board that is crossing from side to side, it should allow the chain to drop into the deepest part of the locker. I would need to move or abandon the below deck cleat.
How about some kind of heavy aluminum plate at rear of locker just below the cover and the aluminum plate bolted to sides of locker as support and My chain does not drop with out help by me
when pulling chain up I use hand to help as chain comes outward
of windlass into locker.
when pulling chain up I use hand to help as chain comes outward
of windlass into locker.
That looks an awful lot like a sideways version of a windless that someone brought to me for repair a couple of years ago. I think that the one I worked on was called a pro-fish 1000 or something like that. It had the same star shaped hole in the face for manual overide in case of a jam. On the one that was brought to me, I ended up making some new parts for a gear cluster that was related to the automatic clutching mechanism in it. I don't know if the device had been mistreated or overloaded before it failed, but it most certainly had failed mechanically. I remember not being impressed with the design of the clutch nor the heft of the internal mechanical parts. After working on that one, I decided that the next windless I put on any boat I owned would have a manual clutch system, rather than an automatic release gizmo, even if I had to design & build it myself. If this one has a gizmo where you run forward for a short period of time & the things goes into freespool, it probably has the same fragile gear cluster gizmo inside. If you get one of those, be sure to only use it for gentle pulling of a loose rhode.What do you think of a vertical windlass like this:
Your choice of power source may vary depending on your intended usage & the amount of excess house bank that you already have. If you anchor in water less than 30' & only do it once in a while & your house bank rarely runs below 75%, then I would just run it direct to your house bank & not worry about it. If you do not already have enough house bank to handle the extra load, then I would probably consider making the house bank bigger, rather than going with a dedicated battery. There are advantages to having a bigger house bank & if you are going to add the weight of an extra battery, you may as well get the most bang for your buck. A starting battery is not likely to be a deep cycle type & is probably going to suffer more than your house bank from the extra load of a windlass. Then again, if you plan to always have your motor running when you use the windless, & you have a nice big alternator, you can probably get away with a lot of cheating on the battery selection.