How Did that Winch Get All Tangled Up?

       Or, I only looked away for a moment …

April 30, 2013

     "He that will not sail till all dangers are over must never put to sea."

Thomas Fuller

I have said before that sometimes sailing is a little dangerous. Really, that’s OK. Lots of things adults do can be a little dangerous – or even very dangerous. We all know people who have done downhill skiing. We also know you can get injured, and we have heard of rare cases of famous people who died while skiing –- Sonny Bono. Michael Kennedy. I know three people who ride or rode motorcycles, and all three have had fairly significant accidents resulting in a badly broken ankle, a badly broken wrist, and some broken ribs. My late husband completely severed his Achilles tendon –- a serious leg injury –- playing, of all things, volleyball. What are you going to do –- just stay at home? Won’t work –- most accidents happen in the home!

We shouldn’t let a small degree of risk keep us from doing things we love. However, it makes sense to be aware of the risks involved. So from time to time I may point out some of these risks. They are easier to describe than the joy of sailing. And when you know about them, you’ll enjoy sailing more because you’ll know you’re prepared.

So – on to overrides. An override means a line that has wrapped itself badly around the winch, as shown in this picture:

  Headsail sheet “wrapped” around a winch. The line 
is now frozen and the winch will not move.

Now, I can tell you four things about overrides:

1)   They happen when the line approaches the winch from the wrong angle.

2)   There is a safe, and a very UNsafe way to solve the problem.

3)   It WILL happen to you if it hasn’t already. It’s a common event for newer sailors and sometimes catches very experienced sailors by surprise. 

4)   The boat will now sail in circles. Just accept it. You’ll have to turn the engine on to force the boat to stay on the needed tack to solve your problem.

That takes us back to #2.

The guiding principle for all fouled lines is this: lines can be dangerous. You really have to pay attention to where your hands and feet are. If you try to force the line off the winch while it is “loaded,” or with a lot of tension on it, you could lose one or more fingers. I’m not kidding –- I know someone it happened to under similar circumstances. One of his hands no longer has a ring finger because he tried to loosen a line under tension.

So what do you do? Relieve the tension. Unless you’re racing, start the engine. Give it just enough power to overcome the force on the sail and move the boat in a straight line instead of circles.

Put the boat on whatever tack you need to so that the wrapped sheet (what we call the lines that control the headsail) becomes the “lazy” sheet –- in other words, there is no longer any load on it because your headsail is now to the other side of the boat. Of course, it can’t go all the way, because you’re going to have to free up that override first. If the headsail is out to port when the override happens, then the tension is on the port sheet. Since it’s the tensioned, or “loaded” line, that gets wrapped, this means to change your tack so the boom is out to starboard. Now the strain is on the starboard sheet and you can safely remove the wrap.

NOW –- take a moment to consider how that wrap happened. Probably, whoever was pulling that sheet in didn’t pay attention to how it was wrapping around the winch. You need to be looking at the winch when you’re using it.

LESSON LEARNED: You might not always have to turn the engine on, but any time I have a significant problem that’s the first thing I do (make sure there are no lines dragging in the water -- even in neutral, a line can get wrapped around the propeller, and then your life will *really* complicated). It can help you solve all sorts of problems, including problems you don’t know how to solve –- yet. With the engine on, I –- or my crew and I –- don’t have to get things perfectly right using only sails in order to get things under control again.