Three days ago I met Peter, my friend and sailing companion, at the boat with the primary goal of mounting the anchor to replace the one that I had been forced to cut loose back in late April. The replacement anchor was a Delta anchor that had been re-galvanised by Hartway Galvanizers for a modest $132. The new 40 meters of 10mm short link chan (from Taylor Marine for $415 trade price thanks to Bruce, including a new chain swivel) was already passing through the hawse pipe into the chain locker. The shackles and chain swivel were temporarily bolted to the ends of the chain.
Everything was in place and and we were looking forward to a simple and fast effort with Peter working on the main jetty and myself on the bow, but it was not to be. With Peter pulling tension on the chain from the jetty I hit the switch at the binnacle to pay out a short burst of chain and it immediately jammed hard inside of the anchor winch.
The relatively new Vetus Maxwell RC10-10 anchor winch is much more closed unit than was the venerable Maxwell that it had replaced, and Peter and I spent what seems to have been well over an hour trying every trick that we knew to free the chain. Toward the end it came down to my lying flat on my stomach with my left hand in the chain locker forming a loop of the chain as it exited the hawse pipe and my right hand striking into the loop as hard as I could with a light hammer. The idea was that because the chain had jammed travelling out of the chain locker it made sense to try to force the chain back into the chain locker. Eventually I was able to tell Peter that I thought that I had gotten movement, which we confirmed when he had a look. Soon we had the chain travelling more or less smoothly back and forth by hand.
The second breakthrough was Peter's analysis that a spring-tensioned flat metal piece designed to keep the chain links in place as they travelled around the winch sprocket had caused the jam because it had been incorrectly fitted. Working without the benefit of the manual (because I had removed most of the boat's documentation in preparation for selling the boat) he figured out how to correctly mount the piece and the result looked very good.
We thought that we had it made but the chain jammed again - not a hard jam because we had been as gentle as possible.
I eventually looked into an opening on the side of the winch and saw what looked like a flat piece of plastic that swung freely between the chain and a vertical bolt and was currently resting on the chain. I commented that I didn't like the idea of anything loose swinging into a fast-moving chain, nor for that matter the sight of an open hole at the side of the winch; but we agreed that allowing the flap to swing from the other side of a thin bolt that we had removed and replaced while trying to fee the chain was an even worse prospect because it would allow the flap to travel in an arc outside of the winch in thin air. I fretted over this impasse for a while then suggested that we remove the bolt and see how the flap would behave as we ran the chain back and forth through the winch. When the flap swung outside of the winch Peter noticed that the end of that flap was flared out to allow the bolt that we had removed then replaced to pass through. In other words, that thin bolt that we had removed was the very thing that held that flap in place. With the flap fixed into position by the bolt and covering the hole I was happy, and thereafter the winch performed beautifully and the Delta anchor was now properly installed.
No comments:
Post a Comment