Windlass Electric  - we don't hesitate to reanchor, and in the Galapagos had to reanchor at least a dozen times to get stuck properly. Would have been hell with a manual windlass!

Windlass Foot Switches are great until they bust then its not funny anymore... I have had both of them break now above and beyond the skinny wires which run to the solenoid switch. Mine are Lewmar and I can't believe they use un tinned copper wire for the switches. The result is that corrosion sooner or later will get to the wire right at the micro switch. Bummer. I pulled these apart and soldered tinned wires into the switches. They work now but I don't know for how long. The best solution is to carry spares...

Windlass...(2002)don't let this happen to you..

We decided to put in a windless that had the gears & motor mounted below the deck. After 3 years it needed a major overhaul.

Well what they don't tell you is that a windlass is well designed for what it does..... except for the motor. The motor is Carbon Steel and has to live in a harsh environment. The reason it is carbon steel is because they basically use a automotive starter for the windlass. This is much less costly than manufacturing something that will stand up.

I checked ours every 6 months or so just to see how it looked.... but I really only looked at the gear casing (not carbon steel) in the anchor locker. Little did I know that the motor was busy rotting away further in the locker. To compound the problem the anchor chain had rusted over the years and the rust had managed to work it's way down the windlass shaft into the sleeve in the gear case.

What that means is the two parts between the drum on the deck and all the under deck stuff wouldn't come apart. After three DAYS of pounding, WD40, temper tantrums, it finally came apart.

The result was what you see. A severely rusted motor housing, snapped electrical posts & a gear case flange with a couple of busted holes.

I tried to pull the motor apart and look inside..... and managed to bust more bolts.

In disgust I took the whole thing to the local electrical guy to get repaired. This sad story is to be continued.......

Part 2 of story.... our windlass gearbox and motor were returned to us about 3 weeks later (Mid January) and the motor had been sand blasted inside & out, and the coils fixed and re-laminated, the terminal posts replaced and the motor primed.

This left it up to me to remove all the old junky paint off the gearbox and then paint for installation... I put primer & 3 coats of paint over the whole assembly.

The cost  for repair was $200 US and could have been much higher if it had gone any further....Check this gear often and don't be dumb like me....

Chain - we bought 200' of 5/16" G4 and wish we had bought 250'. Most of the time in the Caribbean we put out about 120'. That's ok but when it starts to rust you need to turn it end for end, that means the center section is getting used all the time.

Refrigeration is always a never ending topic in every anchorage we land in. If you are handy it is not a bad idea to have a few tools to check out your system. Above is a set of gauges that measures the pressure of the gas in the system. Also it is not necessary bout sure helps to know someone with a vacuum pump if your system develops a leak. At right is a pump and a cylinder of gas I used to refill our system. Pump is courtesy of Terry off "Stella" a Canadian Corbin 39 out of Toronto.

Tools

Refrigeration E-Z Kold . Works well.... but beyond that every system down here has problems sooner or later. Marvin has stood behind his products for us and helped us out "No Charge" when we got in a bind. He has done this for other customers down here.

Refrigeration organization is important. If you store it correctly you can get more in using less energy. Here we use simple metal/plastic baskets to sort bottles etc. This keeps stuff off the bottom...    

We use a cold plate 12 volt system that we divide into two compartments. One for refrigeration and one for freezer.

The freezer is small, and is separated from the refrigeration side by closed-cell foam left over from our cockpit. The foam can be moved around depending on what our needs are at the time.  Anything that goes into the freezer is taken out of the store packaging and vacuumed as shown. This cuts way down on volume and allows us many more meals in the small space.

The plastic tupperware container on the bottom of the fridge is used to store veggies, lettuce, tomatoes, etc. If they go "off" then the liquid doesn't get everywhere. We can store about 30 bottles of beer & pop on the bottom and then we can pile even more on top of them....

Ball Valves need to be exercised when possible on an ongoing basis. They should also have stainless handles on them. This one seized up on me and when I went to close it, it busted off the the shaft at the handle. When I finally hauled I replaced three of them. They were only four years old but salt water attacks everything!!!

Log.... The knot log will eventually stop working. The only way to get it going again is to clean all the little crustaceans off the sucker. I use hydrochloric acid in 5 parts water. Pull the transducer and  soak. Clean  thoroughly and replace. 

Packing gland is being tightened. We use standard Teflon packing for less water leak. It is the old method but very reliable. I change it with the boat in the water.

Bilge is always fun. After three years I discovered that rain coming down the mast inside it was being trapped in the bilge and soaking some of our lockers when we heeled over. I am providing a path to the bilge pump here.....

Link 10 battery monitor is a must. Our first set of batteries were destroyed in one year because they were constantly cycled. You need something like this to tell you when to charge and at what stage your batteries are. I probably check 10 times a day.

Batteries need to be constantly monitored and these Trojan T105's are the most easily available batteries anywhere. The cost is relatively low and they are real work horses. I use six batteries 6V each in series parallel combinations. I also only have only one battery bank.