Drop Anchor! Or Not...
What’s the thumbnail image for this post all about, you ask? That’s our track as we pulled into our anchorage at dusk, pressed the “down” switch on the windlass to lower the anchor, heard the chain and anchor drop a couple feet, then… silence. Ok what now? Did the chain get jammed in the locker somehow causing the circuit breaker to pop as the windlass strained? Nope, that’s a quick check to verify the chain is free and the breaker is still on. Do we have another electrical problem preventing power from getting to the windlass? Not something that can be diagnosed in the moment, especially at dusk after a long day of sailing. Did the windlass motor itself fail? Same as above.
Thankfully Liam has grown into a great sailor for his age and is very reliable when it comes to operating the boat. So we had no reservations about giving him the helm to circle around while Megan and I figured out how we were going to get the anchor down and secure.
Windlass, chain, up/down foot switch on the right.
One quick misguided attempt at a jury-rigged brake for the chain drop. We quickly abandoned this concept!
With Liam slowly driving us in circles, Megan and I were able to take a couple minutes on the foredeck to think through the next steps. We carry a 78lb spade anchor attached to 300ft of chain which normally feeds securely through the windlass preventing the chain from slipping in either direction. Our first thought was to use the manual release on the windlass which allows it to turn freely causing the anchor and chain to ‘free-fall’; however, without having experimented with this before we decided not to risk the relatively uncontrolled drop of a lot of chain in a small anchorage possibly resulting in the boat swinging too close to shore. Megan came up with a much better solution which was simply disengaging the chain from the windlass, pulling an appropriate amount out of the chain locker and onto the deck, then lowering the anchor by hand which was more than doable between the two of us and given the conditions were calm. So I went back to the helm, stopped the boat where we felt comfortable dropping the anchor, scurried back to the foredeck to assist Megan in dropping the hook, then back to the helm to ‘back down’ on the anchor making sure it was set.
While all this was going on three deer, one with a sizeable rack, came out of the woods and down to the beach to watch the action! Unfortunately they decided to leap away as soon as we were set, but hopefully they enjoyed the show. We were also circled by an Osprey splashing down into the water near the boat picking up his or her dinner, and a couple bald eagles soaring higher overhead. Megan and I were sorry to miss the chance to appreciate the wild life, but thankful the crises was averted and we were secure for the night.
Matriarch happily swinging on the hook. A nice quiet little anchorage, very protected and deep enough for us very close to shore. Lots of opportunity to watch the wild life doing it’s thing.
The next morning with the kids off on a paddle boarding adventure I had some time to focus on debugging our windlass issue. After pulling everything out of the forward most locker in the girls cabin (which houses the windlass motor), the first step was using the multi-meter to confirm power was available. Check. The next step was confirming whether the up/down switches were working. A test with the multi-meter showed the switches were operating, but the voltage signal was significantly lower than expected. Great, looks like this is the problem, but now how do we fix it?
Nothing like a Wednesday morning spent in the forward v-berth locker with my multi-meter and a couple cans of corrosion inhibitor!
This is what the windlass control box (black box on top) and circuit breaker (small black box on bottom with button on left side of photo) looked like before I got to work.
The most likely cause was the unhealthy amount of corrosion on the control box switch terminals (the 3 small terminals on the right side of the control box in the above photo), so I started there and took apart the switch terminals along with the main power cables to clean off the corrosion. With that job done and everything put back together, Megan and I anxiously went up to the bow to test out the fix and…. still no love.
Ok only a minor set-back, so back to the forward locker I went. The next possibility was the circuit breaker itself which looked only a little beat up from the outside, but when I went to disconnected the terminals they fell apart in my hands. Now we’re getting somewhere! Lucky for us there was a West Marine just a short dinghy ride away, so I had a couple of my faithful crew (Liam and Grace) accompany me to try and find a replacement. While we were at it, I took the opportunity to replace all the terminal connectors which made for a much cleaner looking install and, hopefully, and working one as well.
Yikes! No wonder we weren’t getting enough power to the windlass control box to trigger the up/down action of the motor.
The finished product all wired up and ready to test. Hopefully to the trained eye this looks a lot better than the original!
Finally time for another test. Megan and I anxiously went up to the bow to test out the fix (again) and…. success!! Even though in the grand scheme of things our windlass issue was relatively minor, what a great feeling to have fixed it and being back to normal operation.
Not all boat-fixes will be this simple we know, and not all failed systems will have such a straightforward troubleshoot to maintain function (i.e. can’t manually pump water through the water maker). but we’ll still take this as a “win” and carry that feeling forward into our next challenge…probably by the time I post this blog.
Upside: never ending content.
