To All: This web site is about a dangerous incident concerning an electric winch starting by itself. There are other comments that relate to truly terrible incidents caused by winch failures. I have included the web cite which takes you to CruisersForm.
As back ground, A few years ago I was in an anchorage in the ICW south of Coco Beach where an IP 485 was also anchored. I believe that the name of the vessel was Sea Salt, at any rate in the morning the owner reported that his Light House windlass had started taking up chain in the middle of the night - by itself. Fortunately he was on board and opened the breaker and stopped it without damage or injury. At the time I thought it was a crazy "one-off" thing, but after reading the discussion concerning this CruisersForm comment I think this topic deserves a large circulation, The IP 485 problem was salt water intrusion in a deck switch. We were in a marina in Ft Pierce where a big GunBoat Cat had multiple electric winch failures but "no run away winches", It had been caught in terrible weather off shore, the failures were all causes by salt water intrusion in the switches. While this form article is mostly about winches, the problem exists with electric windlasses as well.
We regularly use our horizontal winch to go up the mast ... I guess you can really get hurt if the windlass doesn't stop when the button is released. We will now be more diligent about opening the windlass breaker when it isn't in use. We have always left it on at night to in case we have to pull the anchor at night. And in truth we often forget to open the breaker during the day. At any rate have a read.
www.cruisersforum.com/forums/f131/the-hi...rs+Forum+-+Emails%29
What experiences have others in the IP community had, and do people usually keep the windlass breakers open? Do you your electric windlass or winch to go up the mast?
George
S/V Delicia
IP40 #27
