Practical Boat Owner – May 2018

Yacht surveyor and designer Andrew Simpson

cruises in his own-design 11.9m (39ft) yacht Shindig.

Read his blog at http://www.offshore-sailor.com

Monthly musings

Andrew Simpson

Raising the anchor at

the push of a button

makes light work

of a potentially

strenuous task

Some wisdom

on windlasses

Few of us rue the day we decided to swap

the manual windlass for an electric one

I

admit to being something of a miser

where electrical consumption is

concerned – hence the paeans of

praise I heaped upon those tiny

LEDs in last month’s PBO. In

nudging aside those references to the

guzzling halogen bulbs of yesteryear

they have eliminated almost at a stroke

my impulse to keelhaul any crew who

kept a light burning without good

cause. Call me obsessive if you must

but conservation of energy is a byword

aboard Shindig.

Yet I do sometimes get it wrong. When

Shindig fi rst took to the water in 2001 her

foredeck glinted with the sheen from a

stainless steel Lewmar windlass of the

manual variety: a beautifully engineered

but relatively inexpensive bit of kit with, as

one might expect, an electrical appetite of

precisely zero. It served nicely for a couple

of seasons. Granted, a lively anchoring

session in Alderney’s Braye Harbour

raised the blood pressure a trifl e but not

enough to provoke undue alarm.

However, a later event brought a new

angle to my convictions.

It occasionally falls upon yachting

journalists to be despatched abroad in

pursuit of a boating yarn or two. And thus

it was that about a decade and a half ago

Chele and I were joined by another

experienced sailing

couple aboard a

bareboat charter yacht

based in northern

Sardinia – more

specifi cally a marina on

the Costa Smerelda,

the north-eastern shoulder of the island,

within easy reach of the Magdalena

Archipelago and the Strait of Bonifacio.

The strait separates the Italian island of

Sardinia from Corsica which is French.

This area is notorious for its strong winds,

shoals and currents.

It was the end of the summer season

and I had been loaned the boat for a week

to write an appropriate article on

chartering in those waters. The original

plan was to cross to Corsica, but the

weather was unruly and our schedule

tight. Fortunately, there are anchorages

aplenty, many in exquisite surroundings.

It was one such anchorage that tilted my

views on windlasses. In the falling light the

bay itself looked innocuous. It was well

sheltered, and both the chart and the

clarity of the water indicated a sandy

bottom free of horrors. The tidal range

was less than half a metre and there was

no signifi cant current. It all looked very

promising – even in the fading light and

blustery conditions. We motored to a

particularly inviting spot with about three

metres of depth beneath the keel. The

engine was put astern and we dropped

the hook, confi dent that we would soon

experience that familiar jerk, indicating

that it had ‘brought up’.

It didn’t come – the jerk that is. No

matter. The luxury of having an electric

windlass relieved the crew of anything too

strenuous. We told ourselves it would

simply be a matter of fi nding another spot

and repeating the manoeuvre. In truth I

can’t remember how many attempts it

took before we got the anchor to hold – at

least half a dozen – but eventually we

were confi dent enough to switch on the

anchor light and reward ourselves by

fi ring up the barbecue and sampling a few

sips of the local red.

It was Chele who sparked off the ensuing

debate. She said: “If this boat was Shindig

with just you and me on board, you would

have struggled to lift the anchor up by hand

so many times. And if for any reason I had

to do it, I couldn’t have managed it at all.”

Naturally I protested, but on further

refl ection agreed. Advancing age might

sharpen other faculties but physical

strength and stamina are not among

them. Back in England before we headed

south towards the Mediterranean in 2003,

the manual windlass

made way for a vertical

axis electric one – also

by Lewmar.

Five or so years later,

in Greek waters, we

heard of an incident

that stirred our recollections. The elderly

skipper of yacht with a manual windlass

was having problems raising his anchor.

He became so frustrated he dived over the

side to see if he could identify the problem.

After just a few minutes when he didn’t

reappear, his wife called for help. Rescuers

found the skipper standing to attention

astride his anchor with both feet driven

deep into the mud. Evidently, he had tried

to break it out and had failed. Tragically.

Andrew Simpson

The luxury of having

an electric windlass

relieved the crew of

anything too strenuous

20 Practical Boat Owner • http://www.pbo.co.uk