{"id":30,"date":"1999-11-30T00:00:00","date_gmt":"1999-11-30T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/?p=30"},"modified":"2015-10-16T12:09:10","modified_gmt":"2015-10-16T17:09:10","slug":"tips-for-electric-windlass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/tips-for-electric-windlass\/","title":{"rendered":"Tips for Electric Windlass"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"question\">\n<p> Dear Steve and Linda, Impressed by your books, esp. the encyclopedia. Still I&#8217;ve 1 question: I&#8217;m looking for a powered windlass for my new 50&#8242; ALU ketch. In your books you hint electrical windlasses are good enough, however I hear from different people that they can only work for a short period because of heating of the DC motor. Indeed e.g. Muir says to me: max. 10 minutes running time. At a speed of 8 m.min that&#8217;s only 80 meters chain. Now you also write that anchoring involves 3 maybe even 5 trials before the anchor holds. How does that relate to each other? Wouldn&#8217;t therefore a hydraulic windlass be better? Many thanks in advance, Ronald <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<div class=\"answer\">\n<p>Hi Ronald: We&#8217;ve been using electric windlasses for the past 25 years without problems. In all of that time we&#8217;ve replaced two motors.<\/p>\n<p>Hints for successful operation: 1-Get an oversized windlass. For a boat your size I&#8217;d recommend something like the Nilson 3500 or equivalent. 2-Use heavy duty wiring, sized for no more than 3% voltage drop at max amps. On BEOWULF that&#8217;s 00 wire! 3-Run the engine for 10 to 15 minutes before using the windlass to bring battery voltage up, so the windlass has lots of power from the higher voltage. 4-Carry spare brushes, a spare motor, and spare solenoids. 5-Do not mount any control switches on the deck. They always fail. Use a control switch on a long lead, which can be stowed someplace dry. 6-Keep control solenoids and related electrical terminals in the interior, where they will stay dry. 7-Clean and lube the windlass parts at least twice a year. <\/p>\n<p>Good Luck -Steve Dashew<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dear Steve and Linda, Impressed by your books, esp. the encyclopedia. Still I&#8217;ve 1 question: I&#8217;m looking for a powered <a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/setsail.com\/tips-for-electric-windlass\/\">&#8230;Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-anchoring-forum","category-tech-talk"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36173,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30\/revisions\/36173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/setsail.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}