Rope jam on winches

[krawall]

Hi Guys,

just need your input on this as this is a long going discussion with my dealer and nothing is resolved.

My reefing and main outhaul lines are of different quality then the halyards and main/trav. sheets, and they are subject to getting jammed on the self-tailer. It happened as early as day one when we did the test sail but the dealer said it is normal.

What happens is that the ropes are so soft they get deformed inside the rubber (plastic?) top of the self-tailer, and at the exit of same there's that beak that is supposed to take off the line from it. That same beak pokes into the ropes and if you winch a bit more while not seeing this, you end up with the beak buried into the rope, and since the rope is under tension, very very difficult to remove and impossible to remove without damaging the ropes.

My reefing ropes and the outhaul all have a few spots where people did not take the rope off the self-tailer manually (what's the point of a self tailer if you still need another hand there) and some damage is so bad that the inner core was ripped thru the cover.

The dealer still says that this is normal and now he asked another person and that other person now said that everything is OK.

I'm really just waiting for an accident because we have a line jammed in there and can't release it quickly enough.

Anyone else experienced this? For information, we have always at least 3 turns on the winch - most times more than that. The winches are so small, the will not accomodate more than 4 (or 5 with really squeezing the line in)


Tom

[davideso37]

Tom,

I have experienced the problem of the self tailer beak poking into the covers. This occurred with brand new genoa sheets. I believe the outer cover of the sheets were too loosely woven so that the beak could easily poke into the cover. We stopped using these sheets immediately and have never used these sheets again as the risk of injury from jammed genoa sheets is too great. I think they will end up being expensive mooring lines. I purchased another set of genoa sheets with tighter weave on the cover and the problem has been minimised. There is still the odd snag that just catches the cover and pulls the odd yarn but nothing to get too worried about.
In our case it had nothing to do with the number of turns on the winch as the old sheets had performed well for three years with never a snag.
We have a sharp knife in the cockpit area in case it is needed in an emergency.
Regards
David

[offshore]

Hi Tom

The reefing lines and outhaul on our 36i are different from the sheets and halyards, but not so soft that we have had the problem you described. Using a longer stitch length in a double braid cover improves the breaking strain and lowers the stretch of the rope. It does sound like the rope on your boat is howerer way too loose.

Barry

[MalcolmP]

Yes this is a problem associated with Harken winches from the last 5 years . The new design winch that was launched late 2009 and is on the new model Jeanneaus has a much better design on the stripper arm that looks like it should stop the problem

From our experience this is worse with new ropes and sheets, when they get slightly hardened with salt etc that helps, but importantly we now watch what is happening with the rope tail, the tangle occurs when the tail rope rather than falling away gets a further turn around the top of the self tailer, this then increases the likelihood of the point of the stripper arm catching errant threads from the rope tail

I also pushed our Dealer to resolve, with no result. Harken blame the rope type being used and Jeanneau blame the winch design, but obviously does not help us as customers

Malcolm

[Phantom]

We've encountered the same problem and the dealer said he never heard of reefing line threads snagging on the self tailing Harken winch. For us, only one reefing line in a specific area snags when the color trace gets caught and winds in the self tailing partion of the winch. I thought about either cutting the color trace thread out of the cover or getting a new replacement reefing line with a tighter wound cover. I'll discuss the issue with a rigger when I get light air spinnaker sheets.

[rene460]

Hi Everyone,
I had to respond to this as my first post. We also had this rope jamming problem commissioning our SO30i. It was our reefing lines when I was definitely looking for sail for other jamming not at the top of the winch, in rapidly rising wind. The lines were a very soft loose weave, nothing like the halliards or furling line. The loose weave opened up and looped over the stripper finger preventing further stripping by the self tailer. Close examination of the stripper finger revealed nothing obviously wrong. Dealer was good enough to replace the ropes (and reeve them) Good on you, Terry.

I believe it was definitely cheaper rope quality, not the winch,and no problems with the replacement Marlow ropes. I am not sure whether the originals were supplied by Selden or Jeanneau, but either the spec or bid evaluation needs review.