Posted: Aug 01, 2016 - 10:56 AM
So I was able to get out for a very poor sail this Sunday, but didn't care (much) that the wind was almost non-existent as I wanted to try out the Skywinch I got last week. Pictures will come next time I am able, as I didn't have my phone with me.
Mounted it about 42" up from ground on a 4x4 that is buried in the ground with concrete. This height gave me a decent crank height.
My boat rests about 30 feet to beach side of this crank, on the sand and has 4 "shed augers" that they use to "hurricane proof" temporary sheds. These augers are buried in the ground about 3'. I use a couple of ratchet straps across the beams to tie it down - I just don't pull the ratchets too tight.
At typical tide for me bringing the boat back in, I have another 120' or so to pull the boat up the beach. First 60' are every bit or more of 10 degree incline.
Landed at the tideline and popped the Supercat on two sets of beach wheels and wrapped 3/8" triple strand line around the front beam at the mast location and fed the line through the Skywinch. Worked fine as long as I kept slight hand tension on the out feed line. Braided line would have worked better and not have had a tendency to gum up the out feed. But...I had this line and didn't want to go buy new. Fed the line straight down into a 5 gallon Home Depot bucket.
It worked fine. A few things I learned.
- Better to have the whole setup exactly in line with the crank. In other words, perpendicular to the beach at exactly a straight out position from the winch. It wasn't, so I had to go back down the beach and reposition the aft of the cat a couple of times. It was easy as I had all that tension on the boat from the Skywinch, but it would have been nicer to just crank from the post and enjoy the beer.
- It could have been a bit faster. Would love to have had a bigger bail, so that I would have gotten more than about 5-6" line pull per crank of the winch. Not that big a deal though. I suppose if I get impatient, I can mount some sort of drill motor or other device to the crank to speed it up.
- Winch crank is not difficult
- Nice feature of the Skywinch bail is that you can loop the line around the bail at any point in the line. This saves you not having to feed the line in from the end.
Conclusion on my end is that this was a pretty low-cost way to save my back. Retail on the winch is $70. Retail on the line is about the same (though I had it already). Couple of galvanized carriage bolts, nuts and washers. For less than $150, I have a solution for single handing my cat up the beach, and I sail it single more often than not.
I'll follow up with either video or pictures when able
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Supercat 15
Windrider 17
Several Sunfish and Sunfish clones
Ratboat built from Zuma and Sunfish parts
Shallow water sailor in the Delaware Bay
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