Another item on the maintenance schedule was the replacement of the winches. The old ones were... old. More important, as it as usual in ye olde days, both of Mekicevica's headsail-sheet winches turned clockwise. This meant that the starboard sheet had to be wrapped such that it often caused over-ridding. Very often after a tacking to port the sheet would get jammed, requiring us to bear away until the main-sail took the wind off the head-sail allowing the sheet to be freed. Not only annoying, but once in a blow on the Waddenzee when sailing with reefed head-sail only and not much room to manoeuvre, we ended in a tricky situation.
After spending a lot of time thinking-up clever ways to change the way the sheet was led to the winch, I discovered that these days you can get winches that turn anti-clockwise. Problem solved!
I installed two new winches and while I was at it replaced the jam-cleats as well.
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| New starboard sheet winch. Note that it turns anti-clockwise. |
