The Blue View - Handheld Windlass Controller

In the last Blue View, Nine of Cups was in Suriname and I talked about installing foot switches for controlling a windlass, and using a windlass motor control module to reduce the current that passes through the switch contacts. Now we are 50 miles up the Essequibo River in Guyana, anchored off the small town of Bartica. In this BV, I want to address the usefulness of a handheld windlass controller and how to make one.

Navigating the river was a challenge at times. The river has a strong tidal current, and it is necessary to wait until the current is flowing in the right direction before heading upriver. I know this is nothing new to you sailors who grew up sailing in waters with a large tidal swing, but for a guy who grew up in Colorado, it never ceases to amaze me when a river not only flows backwards six out of every twelve hours, but does so with great enthusiasm. The river is quite muddy, making it impossible to pick out shoals and rocks visually. In addition, the electronic charts are off by several hundred feet, and most of the channel markers have long since disappeared. Finally, the local fishermen use long nets, either stretched between poles stuck in the river or between an anchored float and their small dugout fishing boats. Our trip up the river had to correspond to the tidal swings, but had to be in daylight as well. We anchored offshore the first night, a few miles up the river on the second night, and made it to Bartica during the flood tide on the following day.

The river is quite muddy, and every time we haul the anchor, it and the chain come up coated with thick grey mud and clay. Our Boss anchor pulls up great gooey globs of the stuff. Rather than getting the mud all over the deck and down into the chain locker, Marcie uses the deck wash and hose to wash the mud off as the chain comes up. She leans over the bow pulpit, raises the anchor a few feet, and sprays the exposed chain until the mud is washed off, then repeats the process. Unfortunately, in this position, she can't reach the windlass foot switch with her toe.

Our handheld windlass controller makes her job easier and faster. She can lean over the bow pulpit with the hose sprayer in one hand, while controlling the windlass with the other. When we have a lot of chain out and the mud is thick, raising the anchor might take a half hour using the foot switches, while the handheld controller might knock ten minutes off the process. Notice that we still have the foot switches mounted in the deck. If either the foot switch or the handheld controller stops working, the other remains as a backup.

The handheld controller is nothing more than a SPDT rocker switch mounted in a small palm-sized enclosure and connected to the windlass motor control module with a long, three conductor cable. The cable is long enough to reach from the motor controller to the bow. One switch contact connects 12vdc to the 'Up' connection on the motor control module and the other contact connects 12vdc to the 'Down' connection. Since the current required for these connections is less than 5 amps,(typically 3 amps) for our Lofrans windlass motor control module, the switches and wiring can both be small. I used a waterproof Cole Hersee “Contura” rocker switch from West Marine (C-H Pt. No. 58332-22-BP). I store the handheld controller in a small bin mounted in the forepeak locker when not in use to keep it out of the elements for most of its life.

In the next Blue View, I'll talk about our chain counter. It's not difficult to add a small display and some circuitry to the handheld controller so that Marcie can see how much chain is in the water as we drop or raise anchor. Marcie may disagree, but for you fellow sailor-geeks out there, it just doesn't get much more entertaining than that.

The Blue View - Windlass Controllers

As I write this, we are in Suriname, moored near the tiny town of Domburg. A couple of nights ago, an American catamaran sailed in after a passage from Brazil. When they tried to anchor, their windlass jammed with the anchor partially deployed. They had just enough rode out to snag on the bottom, but not enough to hold the boat in place. As they tried to fix the problem, they ended up hitting another boat, then getting thoroughly entangled with it. After a bit of spirited language and a few hours of work, they were finally able to get clear of the other boat and anchor. There were a few rookie mistakes involved, but I shan't pass any judgments – Lordy, we've certainly made our share of mistakes along the way.

It did, however, remind me of the love-hate relationship we have with our windlass, that big, fat hunk of metal that raises and lowers the anchor. With the size of our anchor and the amount of chain we use, it is a very important piece of gear, and something we depend on. When it is working, we love it, but it's a royal pain when it isn't.

In a calm, flat anchorage, I might still be able to haul in a couple hundred pounds of dead weight by hand (I see Marcie smirking about this claim), but it would be a struggle. An alternative would be to use a line attached to a cockpit winch, and winch the chain onto the deck, 25 feet at a time. It would be slow and messy, but the winch would get the job done. When conditions change, however, and we need to leave in a hurry, a working windlass on Nine of Cups becomes essential. We both remember trying to leave a deep anchorage at Tristan de Cunha when the wind shifted and the anchorage became untenable. We were taking waves over the bow and when our venerable old windlass crapped out, Marcie struggled to keep us off the rocks while I hauled in all 250 feet (75m) of chain and our 110 lb. (50kg) anchor. It took hours. Not something I'd want to do on a routine basis.

I've devoted a couple of blogs to windlasses and how we replaced ours. Just as important is the windlass controller. The windlass isn't much good if the switches that operate it aren't reliable. We've tried several different methods, some of which worked well and some of which didn't.

When we bought Nine of Cups, she had a heavy-duty Maxwell windlass that was operated by two deck mounted foot switches. The system was simple and straightforward – when you stepped on one of the foot switches, the contacts of the switch connected the 12 VDC to the windlass motor. This approach, while simple, had two problems.

The first problem was the 150 amps of current that passed through the switch contacts. In the salty environment in which the switches live, conducting that much current through the switch contacts caused a lot of arcing, which in turn, caused the contacts to pit and deteriorate. I think I replaced those switches once a year for the first three years we owned Cups before I got wise to the problem.

In the next iteration, I used a windlass motor control module. In this option, only a relatively small 3-5 amps of current passes through the foot switches, and the solid state relays of the motor controller handle the 150 amps required by the windlass. The foot switches now last many years instead of just one.

The second problem was damage to the deck core from water ingress. Whoever originally installed the deck switches did nothing to protect the core except caulk under the foot switches. Eventually, water made its way into the core, causing the core to deteriorate and the bond between the core and deck to weaken. When we were in New Zealand a few years ago, I removed the top of the foredeck, replaced the wet, damaged core, epoxied it and the deck back together, then fared and repainted the whole area. The job turned out well, and is probably stronger than when new, but it was a lot of work. It would have been a lot easier to prevent the damage to begin with.

Any time I drill a hole in the deck, I do what I can to protect the core from water damage. If I am using self tapping screws, I first drill a hole in the proper location. The hole should be the proper size for the screw and slightly longer than the screw length. Then I increase the hole size by .25” (6mm), about 75% of the depth that the screw will penetrate the core. I will want to remove the screw and fitting later, so I coat both with wax or silicone grease. Then I use a Q-tip to paint the inside of the hole with epoxy. As it is kicking, I mix a batch of thickened epoxy, about the consistency of ketchup, and pour it into the hole. Then I position the fitting and screw the fastener in place. I use just enough pressure to hold the fitting in place. Once the epoxy has cured, I remove the parts, caulk underneath the fitting, and screw it back in place, tightening the screws enough to make a good seal, but not enough to squeeze all the caulk out from under the fitting.

Any hole that penetrates the bottom layer of the deck, like the hole for the foot switch for example, should be temporarily sealed from the bottom to prevent the epoxy from dripping down into the interior. If it is a small hole, I make a plug from modeling clay. If it is a large hole, I attach a piece of scrap plywood to the underside of the deck using a glue gun. I use only enough to tack the wood in place, so it's not too difficult to remove later. Then I seal any gaps between the plywood and the lower surface of the deck with modeling clay. Next, I paint the core with epoxy to wet it out, and give it a coat of thickened epoxy. In this case, the epoxy should be thicker – maybe the consistency of peanut butter, to keep it from sagging too much.

All this sounds like a lot of work, but the hour you spend now will save a few weeks work repairing a spongy deck core down the road.

Stay tuned – in the next blog I'll talk about making a handheld windlass controller, and, if you aren't too “windlass controller-ed” out by then, I'll show you my nifty digital chain counter.

Marcie's comment: “Geek sailors of the world unite!”

The Blue View - Replacing a Halyard

One of the problems we had while crossing the Indian Ocean last year was a head sail halyard that parted. It starts at the deck, enters the mast about six feet up (2m) on the port side, exits the top of the mast and is attached to the head sail. We had last replaced it several years ago in New Zealand, and apparently it had been chafing against the main halyard all these years. Unfortunately, the spot that chafed was inside the mast at a location that never sees the light of day except on the rare occasion the head sail is removed, so we didn't see it coming and it eventually chafed through and parted. Fortunately, we were near the end of our passage and were able to furl the head sail and complete the passage with the staysail and reefed main.

Usually when we replace a halyard, we can use the old halyard as a messenger. We attach the end of the new halyard to the end of the old one, and as the old halyard is pulled out, the new one follows (See the Blue View – Reeving a New Halyard). In this case, however, the old one had parted and pulled out of the top of the mast. We wouldn't have wanted to use the old halyard as a messenger anyway, because if we routed the new halyard along the same path as the old, it too would chafe through in a few years. Better to route a new messenger.

Both the entry and exit points for the halyard were close to the port side, so we wanted the new halyard to lie close to the mast on the port side. If we simply dropped the new messenger down into the mast, it quite likely would foul one of the other halyards inside the mast. To avoid this, we put Nine of Cups on a heel to port. We attached a long line from the spinnaker halyard to a stout cleat on the end of a slip a few boat lengths away and using a cockpit winch, we tensioned the spinnaker halyard until Cups had a definite list to port. Had we been at anchor, we would have swung the boom out to the port side and hoisted the dinghy and engine from the end of it. Together, they weigh about 200 lbs – if this wasn't enough weight, we would have partially filled it with water.

We removed the stainless trim piece from the entry hole for the halyard in the side of the mast, then I rigged up a messenger using 1/8” (3mm) line and a few fishing weights. I attached the opposite end of the messenger to the new halyard, then went up the mast. I lowered the messenger over the masthead block and down into the mast.

Marcie positioned herself at the halyard exit point and watched for the end of the messenger to appear. Using a bent wire, she fished the weights on the end of the messenger out of the mast. Then it was a simple matter to pull the remaining messenger and the attached halyard out of the bottom exit point on the mast as I fed the line from the top.

All that was left to do was reattach the trim piece and whip the halyard ends.