Tell me about windlasses

jayjay4735 · **Posted:** Mon Sep 08, 2014 9:23 pm

Thinking about possibly adding a windlass this year when the boat comes out, or maybe even before depending on how long I end up staying in the water for, and I really don't know much about them. Most of the threads I've seen here have to do with installing a windlass, but I'm trying to decide on what to get. I've been doing some research and there doesn't seem to be too many reviews out there so any experiences with Lewmar, Maxwell, and Lofrans would be appreciated. The models I would most likely be considering would be a Lewmar V700, a Maxwell R612V, or a Lofrans X1 or X2. Feel free to make suggestions on any other models.

This will be for pretty light use, mostly just for anchoring in the bay when I'm on the boat solo or with some people who aren't able to help the most with setting an anchor. I'm rarely anchored in more than 10 feet of water, but guess it could occassionally be anchored in deeper water.

Ideally I would like a vertical model if there is room (anyone with a similar year and model boat, let me know if there was room) and one thing I noticed about the Lofrans model is that they are available in either low profile models, or models that have a drum on top of them. Is there a use for having a drum on top of the gypsy?

Jdpber · **Posted:** Tue Sep 09, 2014 9:30 am

they are amazing.. i wish i had one on this boat :evil:

my next boat will have one.. i grew up with windlasses on my dad and grandfathers big boats.. granted the 75' had 500' of 1/2' chain and a huge anchor so it would have been impossible to pull by hand..

RotaryRacer · **Posted:** Tue Sep 09, 2014 9:33 am

The bow design of a 258 is not conducive to adding a windlass after the fact. I have a customer who would like to add one and he had taken the boat to a local, reputable shop to get it added and it just didn't happen.

Does your boat have the factory bow roller? Or is the bow naked?

RJP

jayjay4735 · **Posted:** Tue Sep 09, 2014 10:10 am

Rotaryracer,

That was a concern as I do not have a factory roller on mine, I did some google searches of anchor roller and some pics came up of boats that seem to have similar bow designs as the 258 with a metal anchor roller mounted on the bow. Thank you, this is the kind of info I'm looking for before I even decide to go out and spend the money on the hardware.

jayjay4735 · **Posted:** Tue Sep 09, 2014 10:19 am

As I look a little more into that aspect of it, it appears that mounts to the angle of the front of the bow is going to be a bigger issue than I had originally thought. Good call on that.

RotaryRacer · **Posted:** Tue Sep 09, 2014 11:37 am

Yeah, it is a very tough design. Have you seen pictures of the optional factory anchor roller?

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=13037

It looks like an after thought on FW's part.

If there was enough interest and we could fund designing and building several properly designed pulpits with windlass accommodations I may be tempted to take on the project.

I spent quite a bit of time working through some design ideas and see some ways to make it work.

jayjay4735 · **Posted:** Tue Sep 09, 2014 12:13 pm

Yes I saw the factory designed option, when I was first looking at pictures of it, I wasn't really paying attention to the fact that it has those angled braces on it. I'm thinking there are three options to go ... well four actually. The first one is to just forget the whole idea and save myself a ton of aggravation. The other three would be to see if a machine shop could fabricate that roller, try and look for a boat that has been salvaged that has a factory roller and see if they'd be willing to part it out, or the other would be to mount a pulpit that would go over the anchor locker. Ideally you would still want to have some access to the anchor locker, so that would be the big challenge there. maybe a heavy duty piano type hinge along the starboard side, and some type of fastener on the port side that you could access with (relative) ease ... some type of quick release tension fastener, or even something you could do in a few minutes with a socket set. I don't know if that would even be strong enough to keep it secured.

www.iFourWinns.com

Tell me about windlasses

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