This morning I began the journey of installing a drum winch. I have the "Stressfree mini NG", the name is wrong, its anything but stress free.
The first problem is where and how to mount it. The winch located in the anchor well OK room wise, but I decided the anchor well as it is, is not strong enough to take the weight of the boat at anchor say in a rough sea.
So I needed to strengthen it. I looked at using stainless RHS bolted about it, but decided that was too hard, and ugly. I then settled on beefing up the floor of the well with epoxy/glass.
According to the suppliers of the winch, I had to have a minimum of 45 degrees angle on the anchor rope to the winch for it to wind on the drum correctly.
This meant building up the floor of the anchor well about 40mm. I went and saw the girls at "Fiberglass & resin sales", and they advised me to use epoxy resin and plywood sandwiched layers.
I cut out triangles of marine ply, and layers of course weave glass cloth to suit. Because I brought ply that was only 6mm, I ended up with 5 layers of ply, and seven layers of cloth.
The girls emphasised temperature as a criticl factor, and as you know we then have had some blistering hot days.
This mornings w report was to be cool, so the wife and I got up at sparrow fart to begin.
I packed the inside of the bow area (under the anchor well) with ice, and also had a tray of ice to keep the mixed resin cool. Following the girls instructions (they also advised using ice to delay the curing), I wet the inside of the anchor well, previously ground down and cleaned, the first layer of mat, then thickened resin them a layer of pre coated ply. The operation went well, four more layers of ply and seven layers of cloth later.
Because the ply have warped a little, I have sat 5 bars of lead on the last layer.
Doing it this way, I have a large bonded area to the hull sides, and a ridged platform to sit the winch. This part of the operation went well, now I have the drain hole to finish off, and the bot holes for the winch to plug with resin as per the "West system" instructions.
After that its designing and making a suitable bow sprit.