Windlass help

tk1973 · August 2017

So was out for our first dinner/sunset on the water with the new to us boat and had a great time until we left.

When I went to pick up the windlass noticed nothing was coming up. Asked the wife to hit the button while I took a look and noticed that the rope wasn't even on the spool and it was just turning. The "teeth" weren't doing anything. Tried to force the rope down but didn't make a difference.

this my first boat with a windlass so am not sure how to get the rope back on the spool. I've got around 30ft of chain and the rest rope. Noticed a big bolt on one end of the spool, do I tighten down on that?

just pulled it up manually and wrapped the chain around the anchor cleat . Was staring at the anchor the whole ride home to make sure it didn't move.

any ideas would be appreciated.

Ian · August 2017

Welcome to the new boat. If the teeth are not turning at all but the motor is, depends on the unit it could be that it’s been disengaged to manually override or a free fall option is in play and maybe not locked back up. With mine after free fall you can see its decoupled and winding up pulls it in then engages again. Hard to say, can you do a short video or take a pic or 2?

tk1973 · August 2017

Thanks for the reply. I was out there this morning playing with it and I got it to spool the chain up with no issues after just pushing in the rope manually. it doesn't seem to like pulling up the rope. Maybe it's just the nature of the beast and the rope is no good. I'm assuming that the rope is not supposed to be wrapped around the gypsy but just over it. I'll keep an eye on it tonight and tomorrow when we go out and see if it does it again.

Ian · August 2017

Correct, rope is grabbed by the gypsy (the bit with the "teeth") and rolled over and passed back down into the locker, it doesn't wind around it. As an FYI, once you get it going properly, as the manuals will tell you, the windlass is not intended to hold back the anchor, merely to pull it up making life easier. The anchor should either have it's rode locked by a chain lock or other means. I use 2 bungies, one short from ceter of anchor cleat to the U shackle and another longer one from the end of the anchor where the shackle is, looped around cleat and back to anchor again with the chain having a bit of slack from the gypsy to the anchor. Redundant I know but if either bungy fails or shackle loosens there's a secondary hold. And then worse case, if it drops, the chain pulls up in the gypsy even before the anchor drops below the bow guide.