Tips

Question

Member Courtney asked:

In this whole set of articles on rigs/spars/lines and the bits and bobs that make the sailing happen I see no mention of the service schedule or recommended sundries for winches. I found your suggestions for a water-based degreaser, but no suggestions for the grease (And there’s sooo many, and they all claim to be the best. Ugh). With 10 winches on the to-do list for spring, does anyone have a tried and true winch grease?

Answer

You hear all kinds of recommendations for winch service intervals, with the most common being every year, or every season.

But like you, we had a bunch of winches on our McCurdy and Rhodes 56 so servicing them every year would have been a crazy use of time that could be used more profitably in other areas—there’s never enough time to do everything that ideally should be done on a cruising boat.

So we found that servicing all our Lewmar winches every three years was just fine.

And I have to confess that several times over the years the interval was longer than that.

Anyway, we never had any trouble with our winches as a result of this service interval. I think the key is doing a really good service, when we do it, with close attention to checking for any wear and immediately replacing any parts that show even a little.

That said, in nearly 30 years, we have only replaced a couple of spindles —worn teeth.

As to which grease, people get terribly worked up about this on the forums, but we found that our favourite Lubriplate 130-AA works fine and lasts well over the above interval.

In theory we are supposed to use a light oil on the pawls, but we have always just used the same grease and had no problems with sticking.

That said, when I serviced the Harken winches on our J/109 last year I used Harken grease and Lewmar winch pawl oil as an experiment. So far, there has been no discernible difference.

One thing I would caution against is using a lower quality or thicker grease than the 130AA on the pawls, since if they stick in the retracted position the winch can spin and really hurt someone.

Particularly beware of forum posts touting cheaper lubricants from doubtful sources, which, these days, includes Amazon and eBay—both are riddled with counterfeits of other stuff, so I’m guessing the same applies to lubricants.

Further Reading

• Winch pawl spring warning
• Solvent for cleaning winches

A cool tool for tuning a one-design boat where the settings are known, as they are on our J/109. Probably not worth the money otherwise.

Here’s how to tune a rig without.

Question

Member Arne asked:

When I tuned the rig on my OVNI, it started vibrating/resonating in the wind when on anchor. It starts at fairly low wind speeds, and I can’t tell exactly where in the rig it is. I can sometimes feel some vibrations in the shrouds. It sounds like a motorboat approaching a couple hundred meters away, so not super loud, but pretty annoying still. Is this a problem you have experienced or have any tips on a remedy?

Answer

Rigging vibration is both common and hard to diagnose, and even harder to stop completely. A few things based on my own experience over the years that may help:

• Although it does happen, vibration and hum are rarely caused by wire standing rigging. The wire may vibrate, but that’s unlikely to be the source.
• Rope rigging is likely to be the original source. Places to look include:
  • Topping lift, probably the most common source.
  • Rope running backstays. We loved the change to HM rope on our McCurdy and Rhodes 56, but there are always tradeoffs. The wire never hummed and the rope often did.
  • Rope halyards that are not in use and set up hard can often be the source.

There are probably more proposed solutions to the rigging vibration problem than there are sailors, and few, if any, work every time. Here are a few that have helped us, but none are a panacea:

• Change the tension on the offending halyard or stay.
• If it’s the topping lift, get rid of the damned thing.
• If you must keep the topping lift, attach a piece of shock cord. Might not fix it, but it’s a good hack.
• If it is the wire rigging, install a backstay adjuster so you can slack the rig off at anchor. It’s a great upgrade for a whole bunch of reasons.
• Stringing a piece of shock cord from a tight and humming runner to a shroud and then varying the tension and position until it stops.

Comments

That’s all I got. Anyone else have any bright ideas on how to stop rigging hum?

Note, we have already covered rig pumping, which is a different problem.

Here’s a quick way to secure turnbuckles with no need for taping and that is quick to take off when we need to adjust the rig.

The secret is selecting a ring-ding (a technical term that shows the user is a real professional rigger) that is just too big in diameter to allow the barrel to turn.

Here’s a bunch more rigging tips, including another way to secure turnbuckles that’s more suitable for offshore boats.