Anchors aweigh, again.

Remember the musical Anchors aweigh with Frank Sinatra and Gene Kelly, two young NAVY guys on leave that got into all sorts of misadventures in comedy and song, well what has that got to do with this next post...dunno, just thought I’d mention it, totally irrelevant apart from the word “anchor”

Enough of that frivolity......

Since lifting the anchor in a bay at Naxos in the Cyclades, the anchor windlass has been somewhat slower at retrieving our anchor. Gradually getting worse, we had it checked in Lesbos. At that time it was reported to be strong and normal, but the little voice in my head thought otherwise, but thought also it may be a battery issue because we had to change those out also at the same time.....

In Alacati in Turkey Nathan noticed that a plug was missing from the gearbox. It looked as though it had been knocked off. In an effort to find it we emptied the chain locker of 100m of 10mm chain, but the nut was not to be found. Perhaps the issue was the gearbox had leaked its oil and the extra friction caused the windlass to slow and pull the battery voltage down.

We filled the gearbox with gear line and there was definitely some improvement, but still at 50% of retrieval speed, but strangely enough the windlass still had enough torque to pull the anchor free from the bottom and set it into its cradle, just...

We got away with it until retrieving 60m of chain from the quay at Yalikavak. Nathan reported that the windlass stopped working. It wasn’t until he reversed the windlass that it continued, but at a very poor state. This was sufficient issue for us to go to Didim and get it checked out. An anchor is a vital bit of kit. It would be extremely difficult to pull up this anchor and chain by hand. You would have to jury rig ropes and the jib winches and pull it up in stages, not good if you have to leave at night in a hurry.

Once in the marina, Nathan pulled out the windlass in the searing heat and disassembled it......bingo, the seal between the motor and the gear box had failed spewing oil into the motor bearings and internals. Bits of carbon brush were suspended in the oil as the motor end cap was removed. Not only that a brush holder had disintegrated and the motor bearings were undoubtedly contaminated with crud.

We took the windlass to a service agent in the marina, hoping it could be repaired. A new windlass was worth 1500 Euro....cough, gasp.

As it turned out, it was repairable. Nathan does a lot of 4WDing and knew what the issue was and probably could have repaired it as he has done to his own, but we had to wait for parts and Nat was going to leave for Melbourne, so it was prudent to get the marina’s agent to fix it.

They did in fact do that. I saw the bench test. We got it back the day after Nat and Meaghan left. I reinstalled it with no issue, not bad for a two left handed non mechanically minded individual. Now the windlass run at warp speed...