Articles Adventure Bound Small Boats and Anchor Winches | Small Boats and Anchor Winches |
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| Written by Andrew Clark | |
| Thursday, 12 April 2007 | |
 With out a doubt, one of the most laborious tasks any boating angler faces while out on the water is laying and retrieving the anchor. Some people view anchor winches as a luxury if not a sign of being a bit soft in the physical department, but nothing could be further from the truth. With a few basic tools, installation is straight forward and the cost is probably less than you may think
An anchor winch runs off the 12V battery that powers the electrics on the boat and is controlled by a small toggle switch mounted on the dash board. It not only lowers and retrieves the anchor, but it also acts as the bollard for where the rope is secured to the boat. After the anchor has been laid the rope locks into place on the wheel of the winch which means no more having to tie the anchor off in a strong current! One other INSTALLATION
For a fibre glass boat, installation is generally easier. It’s a matter of cutting a small hole through the top of the deck so that the rope can pass to and from the anchor well or rope box inside the bow, then mounting the winch directly above it. Whether mounting a winch on an alloy or glass boat, you need to make sure that it is positioned far enough back so that the anchor can be locked back into position against the bow sprit roller for travelling. Remember, the anchor now lives on the bow roller when not in use.
The electrical side of things isn’t that difficult either. One thing to be mindful of is that anchor winches draw a fair bit of current, so if you need to extend wiring to the battery then use some heavy duty electrical cable. Basically you have a switch, a positive and negative wire – pretty straight forward to set up. Just make sure you have a heap of cable ties so that the wiring can be neatly hidden from view and that you seal over any splices you make to the wiring with electrical tape to prevent corrosion. ROPE AND CHAIN Most winches nowadays can use anchor rope in the 8-10mm diameter size, so chances are you may not need to replace your anchor rope. You will however need to get some new chain as winches use short link instead of long link chain. The anchor rope is attached to the chain via a spice rather than a ‘D’ shackle. If you don’t know how to do this most marine outlets would probably do it for free - if you buy some short link chain off them!
Most anchor winches sell new for $400 plus. If you want to hunt around it isn’t hard to find one second hand at a better price. The anchor winch shown in the pictures was bought second hand for $200, included 5 meters of short link chain and the materials used to install it cost $20. That’s about the price of snapper reel. These winches are a bit like mobile phones; once you get one you wonder how you ever managed with out it. |
huge advantage of using a winch is that you can make micro (and I mean micro) adjustments to the rope length once the anchor is down, to position the boat exactly where you want to. Very handy when fishing over under water structure like drop offs. Anchor winches come into their own when bridle rigging the boat. Bridle rigging is when a rope is attached to the stern, then attached a few meters down the anchor rope from where it is secured to the bow of the boat. This technique is used to get the boat hanging in the direction of the tide. In conditions where the wind is blowing in the opposite direction to the tide – the boat hangs sideways and the fishing lines don’t go straight out the back of the boat. The usual hassle with bridling a boat is that it takes a heap of practise to master and invariably you have to continually make adjustments to allow for a weakening or strengthening tide. When fishing in an area like Port Phillip for whiting or snapper, bridle rigging can be the difference between being able to fish and not being able to. The problem is, being such a pain to do many anglers just can’t be bothered with it. With an anchor winch you can make adjustments from the helm so bridling becomes a piece of cake.
Installation is easy provided you don’t rush things and use a bit of common sense. Most winches are secured to the boat via long stainless steel bolts. Because the winch retrieves the rope through the top then ejects it out from under the winch, you need to put some fore thought into where you intend to secure the winch to the deck. For example, in picture 1. the winch was mounted directly over the anchor well of this plate alloy boat. To provide a solid base for securing, an extra piece of 3mm plate alloy was cut to shape then mounted over the front half of the anchor well, so that the rope was able to freely go in and out of the well when the winch was being used. This might look and sound more difficult than it really is. It takes a bit of time, but isn’t that hard.
The bottom line is this; take your time, don’t go drilling holes in the boat until you’re certain that’s where you want them and when all else fails – read the instructions. Actually, read the instructions first and use the template that you always get with a product like a boat winch, for drilling holes. It’s not rocket science.
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