I anchor a fair bit on gunkhole days and, I have wondered why there has not been more available in the range for anchor winches before. Electric anchor winches have always been around , worth about half the cost of my boat, but overkill for small craft. I have a vague memory of a manual anchor winch on gumtree yonks ago but it was a brute of a thing from Noah’s “After the Flood Garage Sale”. With an ageing population and proliferation of boats I figured a manual anchor winch much like a trailer winch would sell.
Anyway while viewing a few u-tub vids on cruise boat mods I came across this quite accidentally. Go to about 4.10
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GODtuyYW9Cw
Pretty nifty , has rope windlass on other side . Went looking for price which I figured would be still steep but came across this on
https://windlasssales.com/manual-windlass-sale/amp/
Which looks to be more small boat style and no doubt cheaper. I went looking on Aus flea bay to see if anything like it came up, no, but once again by accident found this .
Interesting that many small electric anchor winches are now available and at that price. Of course that gives no indication of use or quality but obviously the Chinese can make just about anything to a price . There are certainly a lot of quite low priced electric anchor winches available now on Aus flea bay . The last time I remember looking years ago there were burger all.
I really can get away without one….now….. But given have no sheet winches on my boat anywhere at this point and clearly I’m becoming in the minority as mechanical assistant goes, I’m interested to see what might be. I like the red manual anchor winch above but USA site and as yet have not located any equivalent on an Aus site but I’ll keep looking.
Then I wondered …..could you make one that cranked vertically with an extended handle by side mounting a sheet winch …..then I thought I’d just post this.
I’d like to throw it open for experience, input, comments, derision etc .
