Electric Halyard Winch

Electric Halyard Winch:

I carefully measured before drilling this hole.  There is also a slight radius increase near the top of the flange, so I had to bevel the top of this hole to get the power winch, a Lewmar 44 Ocean Series winch, to lay flat.  I was able to find two of the needed bolts to secure it, but there is no rush as I may need to modify the winch drive shaft to mate up to the gearbox.  Note the thickness of the fiberglass.  There is over an inch of solid fiberglass, a layer of wood and then more fiberglass.  The later two layers could have been skipped as the top layer is very strong.

Here it is in place but not bedded in and mounted.  Of course we had a fe major rain storms and it leaked.  I was originally going to put this on the port side, but changed my mind as this puts it over the gally sink and away from a head butting location.  Believe it or not, this winch required 110 Amp breaker and 1/0 wire to feed it.  I bought a 100 Amp breaker and will need 19' of wire to serve it.  List price on the wire is $7.20 per foot.  I am hoping I get a good discount on that price--it is a bit steep.  My cost will be about $200, I'm guessing for the wire alone.  I also have a relay and a deck button to control it.

Here is my snag.  I can mount the winch to the top of this winch (top side of the gear box opposite the flange, but then I could only access it from the top. I don't want to cut a big hole in the deck.  The flange on the bottom has a whole pattern 3.5" across which does not match the winches 3.25" hole pattern.  My friend Karl is drilling new holes and tapping them with 3/8-16 threads.  Also I will need a 7/8" spacer to drop the gear box down to avoid cutting into the underside of the deck.  I will have to make a fiberglass cover to hide this ugly thing too. 

The wires shown are for a thermal shut down switch, which is wired in series with the relay control switch.  There are three contact poles, I will only use two of these as this winch will only operate in one direction.

I am looking forward to putting someone up the mast is 75 seconds.  It will be an easy two man job to send someone to the top of the mast, instead of an ordeal using normal winches, or a slow climbing procedure with prussic knots.  This is important, as previously mentioned because I have several tasks to do requiring going up the mast in the near future.