Fitting of electric anchor winches

[KevinR]

Has anyone fitted an electric anchor winch to their Top Hat, if you did, how did you do it, what modifications to the existing anchor well did you have to make, etc?
Cheers,
Kevin

[Alyosius]

G'day Kevin and welcome to the Tophat forums.

The only one I know about was Troppo on Windchaser documented in another thread on these boards: here

Essentially he built an extension to the existing anchor well and strengthened the existing hatch. He can probably help you with more specific answers though.

[Troppo]

Hi KevinR

The electric anchor winch is still going strong. Used it heaps of times. So far I have not had any problems with the set up. I never want to go back to hand hauling anchors again.

Basically, by increasing the depth of the well, the winch easily drops all the chain and rope in there and no dramas with the mound getting to high. Hmm, I was looking at the mound today, 10 metres of 8mm chain and 50 of 12 mm nylon rope, and the top of the mound was sitting down a good distance from the winch. It is possible I could have made the well extension not so deep but the extra room will be needed if I go for longer rope or more chain.

The thing I was most concerned about was the strength of the anchor lid. I was going to reinforce it but only beefed up the hinges and put a bolt through on the other side (starboard side) to hold it down tight. The reason I did not reinforce the lid was (a) I read somewhere what thickness would be safe and when I drilled through the lid it was thicker so I reckoned that was a good start (Can't recall where I read it.) (b) I noticed the lid sits down into the deck a little way, there is a lip goes around it and holds it in place. So, the lid is not going to slide off and with the extra bolt it is not going to lift up. It isn't going anywhere.

Well, the theory was that the lid was not going anywhere. What has happened in practice since I put the winch on a year and a bit ago? Today when I pulled my well-stuck anchor up, it was bogged down so hard the winch motor couldn't budge it. BUT even then with the winch at max, the lid does not flex or move at all. To pull up the anchor, I let out some of the chain, wrapped it around the standard anchor cleat so force was not going to go on the winch motor and just revved up the outboard in gear to drive the boat forward. The anchor came loose, I got the chain off the cleat so the winch could pull it up and up she came. The lid with anchor winch on it only handles the raising and lowering forces, since once the anchor is down, the rope/chain goes around the standard cleat. So, in practice the system is working well.

The well extension is not glued in as I want it removable. I want to be able to get right up into the bow to tighten, if needed the bolts that come through with fittings. The well extension I put some stick-on foam around the edge like is used around hatches to seal them, the extension is not glued down. AND I put a gutter around the inside of the bottom of the old anchor well and the extension sits up a bit from the old anchor well floor. This is so when water runs into the anchor well, it can flow out the original drain hole and does not sit where the extension joins. Water that goes further down, to the bottom of the extension drains out of a second hole which meant I had to put another hole in the side of my boat. Seems to work ok. I have dumped buckets of fresh water over my chain/rope with the lid lifted up, just to clean them, and water did not leak past the extension join into the boat.

If I am not making sense, I'll try and do some diagrams. I present what I did as something which is working for me but there are likely better ways of doing it. I am happy to answer any questions.

troppo