Winches on Mac 25

[Mehitabell]

Hello I'm wondering if anyone knows how to usefully use their cabin-top winches. When I put the job sheet through them I can only get a partial turn before I have to reset the handle. The handle hits the railing. I figured I could get a ratcheting handle but have been advised that those are unavailable. We were sailing in 15-18 knot winds off the MS gulf coast last week and really needed the winching power.
Thanks so much!
'83 Mac 25

[Tomfoolery]

The winches themselves should be ratcheting. They should turn CW (looking down on them) freely, and not spin CCW. The handle itself does not have a ratcheting mechanism - that's inside the winch.

If yours don't ratchet, it's possibly they haven't been serviced in a while and could stand cleaning and lubing.

Unless the 25 used some other type of winch I'm not familiar with.

[Mehitabell]

Thanks so much. The winches work correctly as you have described. The problem is that I can only get a partial turn before I have to take the handle off and reset it to get another partial turn. It is very frustrating. Is this normal?

[sailboatmike]

No the winch itself should rachet not the handle, when you move the handle the opposite way from tightening

[Tomfoolery]

The problem is that I can only get a partial turn before I have to take the handle off and reset it to get another partial turn. It is very frustrating. Is this normal?

Just keep cranking the handle back and forth. The winch will turn to wind in the line, and sit there holding it while you crank back for another bite.

Unless you have 2-speed winches. That's different, as they wind in both directions, fast in one, slow in the other. But that would be odd on a Mac.

[Mehitabell]

Thanks so much! So it seems that my winches are not working correctly. I will operate. You guys rock

[Sisu]

Some Macs (like ours - '85 Mac25) did not come with ratcheting winches - they only operate in one direction. When we got ours it came with the OEM non-ratcheting mounted on the cockpit sides behind the genoa cars. You can tell the difference by looking where the handle attaches; if it is on the same piece of metal as the drum it's not ratcheting, it has to be a separate part so that the handle can rotate independently.

We replaced our old winches with #6 Lewmar single-speed ratcheting winches off eBay and moved the old ones to the cabintops (so we now have 2 sets of winches - primaries for the genoa/spinnaker sheets, cabintops for halyards/jib sheets). We use an 8" winch handle and took care to mount the cabintop winches in a location where the handle clears the stanchion. I'll post a photo when I have a moment.

By the way, if anyone wants winches check eBay. Sometimes they go for steals. I just saw a pair of Lewmar #7s go for $32!!

[Mehitabell]

Yep mine is similar. 2 enkes winches on cabin top. We don't have a Genoa so I use the cabin top for the jib and for the halyards. Switching those with the Lewmar winches we have in the cockpit. Those work great but we never use them. Slowly learning...

[Sisu]

Just FYI, here is our deck setup. We race the boat, so we installed proper rope clutches and we swapped out the stock horn cleats for cam cleats for our jib and genoa sheets

[Mehitabell]

Nice looking boat and crew! I just finished doing the same thing but in reverse. Since I don't have a genoa yet, I've moved my rachetting winches to the cabin top for the jib sheets and halliards. May I ask you a couple of questions about your rig? How much of a difference do you find adding a boom vang has made for you? Also you have many lines coming past your winches on the cabin top. Jib sheets, halliards, what else?
Thanks!

[Sisu]

The vang makes a big difference in being able to effectively trim the main. Without it, in any kind of breeze the mainsheet basically becomes a vang rather than an angle of attack control - it's just controlling the twist in the sail, which is not efficient. We sailed without it last year, and even just doing casual cruising downwind sailing was pretty interesting! If you make one upgrade to your running rigging, add a vang.

We race with a symmetrical spinnaker, so we added a few controls to the mast/deck and fed them back to the clutches through some deck organizers. From left to right we have:

-Spinnaker pole foreguy
-Jib Halyard
<cabin>
-Main Halyard
-Spinnaker Halyard
-Spinnaker pole topping lift

Also visible on either side of the cabintop are our "twings," which help us adjust downward tension on our spinnaker sheets.

Still waiting on results from this week, but we've been out racing three times now, and apart from a bit of a disaster on our first outing we have been solidly midfleet. We've beaten bigger and/or (theoretically) faster boats on a regular basis (although smaller and slower boats beat us, so it all works out).

[Mehitabell]

Awesome. It seems that a vang is a pretty easy mod as well. Thanks