Replacing winches

Hi Jimmy,

First of all, welcome to the association I hope you are enjoying your new boat.

 

You are correct, replacing the primary winches is something that many owners have had to do.   To get access to the nuts you will need to cut and access hole in the top of the winch-handle pocket, however I will warn you that the nuts are likely to have been glassed over in the factory and the end of the bolts were probably cut off with bolt croppers damaging the thread.   I ended up having to drill out the top of the bolts (machine screws?) carefully from above, a slow process but it’s only 5 per winch.

 

Most owners upsize the winches from the original Lewmar 40’s.   I fitted Lewmar 46ST but others have fitted Anderson or Harken.  Whatever you replace them with make sure that the winch base is not larger that the width of the coaming as that would take the boat out of class.

 

Hope this helps

We did this on Jemmana or rather JR did. He moulded a piece of the inside of the locker to blank off the hole. No doubt Kit would do the same. The alternative on the Port side is to cut a hole in the Galley area of the bulkhead & blank it with a standard dingy buoyancy hatch cover as RWO or equivalent - This was how Muscadet's winch was changed. The starboard side winch can be reached by removing the quarter berth head liner ( provided one is reasonably slim)