Winching.

[cuttlefish]

Hi,
Has anybody got any knowledge of how to set up a situation to winch a rib onto a beach?
Tx.
Rupert.

[BogMonster]

I would have thought the easiest thing would be to have an old Land Rover or something, with an electric winch on the front?

My concern on my one would be the strength of the bow eye, it creaks a bit when you take up the strain on the trailer. Also if you are using a big electric winch on a vehicle I guess you'd have to be careful as a 9000lb winch would rip the bow eye right out if you weren't careful!

[Tim M]

You might want to check your bow eye if its loose or makes interesting noises; it's there to winch the boat with and should be strong enough to support the boat under a tow/winch.

[jwalker]

Originally Posted by BogMonster

My concern on my one would be the strength of the bow eye, it creaks a bit when you take up the strain on the trailer.

Stephen, is the bow eye high up? If so, you need to fit one that is just above deck level with a spreader plate inside. This gives you the stongest point and, depending on the height of your winch, tends to lift the front of the boat as you winch it in.

[BogMonster]

Originally Posted by Tim M

You might want to check your bow eye if its loose or makes interesting noises; it's there to winch the boat with and should be strong enough to support the boat under a tow/winch.

It just flexes a bit (only a small amount) when you really take up the strain to make sure the boat is tight against the front of the trailer. You're right, I should check it properly ... though being a bunk trailer there is no real danger of the boat departing astern on the public highway, the damn thing is hard enough to get off when half of it is afloat sometimes!

jwalker yes it is right up under the toobs on mine and the backing plate is nothing to write home about either....

When I recover mine I just drive it up the trailer till the 90 starts to move forwards so I don't actually use the winch for recovering it at all, but I see where you are coming from regarding the angle of pull. At the moment the pull is almost exactly horizontal. I suppose having more than one bow eye could be no bad thing anyway!

Sorry Rupert, hijacking the thread a bit here

Another option for winching onto a beach if nothing else was available might be a small Tirfor type hand winch and a ground anchor? Though how you would then get it back into the water is worth considering...!

[cuttlefish]

some interesting solutions there. I don't think the landrover idea can work because there is no access to the beach (it is a steep walk down, and further, you can't take cars - it is on Sark).
Stephen's notion of a Tirfor type hand winch and a ground anchor seems interesting, but of course I need to winch the rib in AND out of the water. I'll try to find out more about it. The idea of winching it in is to safeguard during heavy swell and drastic SW winds. Several boats got lost last year, or bashed onto the rocks.
I wanted to post a picture of the beach we have in mind, but I can't find the photo yet. Maybe later.


Rupert.

[BogMonster]

If it is only for "emergency" use I suppose you can always work on the basis that your no. 1 priority is to get it out of the water to preserve it, and getting it back in again afterwards is less important....

If you could set up a really strong mooring point offshore than you could run a line from the beached boat out to that, through a snatch block and back to the winch (of whatever sort you use) on the beach and pull the boat back in to the water that way you'd just need a little tender or some other way of getting out to the buoy to put the line on.

The hand winch I settled on for a backup in my Land Rover (have a hydraulic winch on the front) is this one: T-Max Hand Winch available from various 4x4 suppliers in the UK, mine came from Bearmach plc. I have the middle one in the range but depending on the weight of your rib the smallest one would probably be ok.

One advantage of a powered drum winch is that you could use Dyneema or one of the other synthetic winch lines which would remove any problems with salt water corrosion on the cable. You can't use synth line in a hand winch (not that type anyway - all the other "rope hoist" hand winches e.g. Tirfor work in the same way as far as I know) and you aren't supposed to lubricate the cables in those either as the winch grips the cable using a "hand over hand" method and greasing it doesn't help!

[cuttlefish]

OK,
Here is a pic of the beach (please ignore the tourists in this case) where we want to put the winch. If, as Stephen says, I can get a mooring just out before those rocks on the left, I would get a certain amount protection until the real gales blow up. Then I could winch it in for emergency purposes.
The only problem is that when the boat is winched in (or when I am away in the UK or France), someone else might use the mooring (it won't have my name on it), and when I get back, perhaps late at night, I have no mooring.
Any ideas?
Thanks,
R.

[cuttlefish]

The system would not let me upload the file because it is too large.
Rupert.

[BogMonster]

Originally Posted by rupert

OK,
Here is a pic of the beach (please ignore the tourists in this case) where we want to put the winch. If, as Stephen says, I can get a mooring just out before those rocks on the left, I would get a certain amount protection until the real gales blow up. Then I could winch it in for emergency purposes.
The only problem is that when the boat is winched in (or when I am away in the UK or France), someone else might use the mooring (it won't have my name on it), and when I get back, perhaps late at night, I have no mooring.
Any ideas?
Thanks,
R.

Put a sign on it saying "Private mooring belonging to Rupert, any git who uses this without permission will be released and dashed to bits on those rocks over there --->>>" I bet they only test your resolve once

You need to reduce to 640x480 photo size, alternatively you can host it on www.photobucket.com which is free, and link to that.