Removing keel winch.

[Cactus Jack]

I need to unbolt the swing keel winch from it's mount on my Catalina 25 to do some minor repair work on the winch. I don't want to pay for a haul-out for this, and the boat's not due for bottom work anytime soon. I was wondering if I could get away with simply lowering the keel to rest on the bottom with the boat in her wet slip. I'd probably do this on an incoming tide, and should only need a half-hour or so with the winch removed. I've also thought about anchoring out in water deep enough that the keel would not bottom out, but the rocking of the boat in open water would make it more difficult to do the repair I need to do.Any comments or suggestions on these ideas? Oh, another idea just occurred to me; has anyone ever run a line under their swing keel, and secured it such that it would hold the keel up when the winch is released?Thanks for any ideas,Jack

 

[randy]

Me too

I am wanting to do the same thing with my C22. seems as long as you CAREFULLY lower the keel, it should rest in the extended position and be ready to be hoisted up when ready. Hoping anyone else has some thoughts on this.

 

[randy]

Mission accomplished...sort of

we went out yesterday and carefully lowered the keel via our winch. no problem at all, would have been able to trade out the winch if our cable had been ok, but whoever put this cable in was not right. the cable was very frayed on the barrel of the winch, and they had installed it so that the good part of the cable was supposed to prevent the frayed parts from taking a load. sheesh. so now we have to take the boat out of the water and replace the cable.but, as i said, we went to a deeper part of our marina, lowered the keel with no problem and would have easily been able to trade out winches. hope this helps.