Slipping or uncontrolled sheets, overrunning or even trapped fingers are not necessary. Nevertheless, experience shows that many sailors find it difficult to handle the winch correctly. A short tutorial just in time for the start of the season.
Winches have long been standard equipment on board sailing yachts, as they make handling halyards, sheets, outhauls and other lines much easier. The drums are available in a wide variety of designs, from single to three-speed operation, with different gear ratios, self-tailing, electric or muscle-powered.
The basic principle always remains the same: when hauling, a gear inside the winch combined with the leverage effect of the crank reduces the load. The problem: Often too few turns are made around the drum, or the sailor is positioned unfavourably so that he cannot optimally transfer his power to the winch via the crank.
How to avoid these and other mistakes and, on the contrary, how to improve manoeuvring on board by operating the winch correctly,
can now be read in the new on-board practice series in YACHT (issue 9/08, available in magazine shops from Wednesday).
Pascal Schürmann
Editor YACHT
