"Wayne.B" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 13 Jul 2010 22:35:20 -0700, "nom=de=plume"
wrote:

I was thinking you were saying adding a power sheet winch (for
sail adj and raising, right)?

Sounds nice, but I'm wondering if it's worth it for normal sailing. I
suppose they can be turned off but the winch used manually? I could see
one
for raising the main. Big boat.. lots of effort I'd imagine!

A powered sheet winch makes a lot of sense for larger cruising boats.
I have only sailed on a couple of boats that had them, but I helped a
friend deliver his boat NY to the Chesapeake a few years back. He had
a powered winch on the cabin top, and I thought it was a good location
and very useful. It was positioned primarily for use with the main
halyard but it was also possible to use it on the jib sheets by first
taking several turns on the normal sheet winch, and then leading the
sheet forward to the powered winch. It had two power switches, one
for low speed and another for high speed.

The biggest caveat is that a great deal of care is required when
hoisting sails. Normally you feel the extra resistance right away if
a sail jams in the track but with a power winch it is possible to do
some damage if you don't catch it quickly.

Interesting! Thanks for the detail about the power winches. I think they
would be a good thing to have, but I guess there would be some concerns
about complexity (more complex a system, the more unreliable it tends to
be), including a big drain on the batteries if there's no shore power. I
guess that opens up the question of self-generating power such as wind or
solar.