Another easy job knocked off the list. The port winch had started to slip occasionally under load towards the end of last season. I initialy thought I'd buy some fancy new winches as these look pretty poor and also the handle tend to get in the way. Having seen the price, I decided against it. I wasn't sure what lurked beneath the drum so it was with trepidation that I undid the large screw on the top and slipped the drum of it's spindle, I half expected to see springs and bits flying all over the place.
I was pleasantly surprised at how simple these winches are. The real bonus was that I could immediately see that I'd be able to change the direction of the winch. Both winches currently wind clockwise which is counter intuitive when loading the port side Genoa sheet.
The grease that was still in the winch had become like Plasticine so needed scraping out. One of the springs on the prawl was also misshapen so I had to carefully reshape that taking care not to snap it.
Now that everything was cleaned and freed off, the picture above is a before shot :), I replaced the prawls facing the other direction. After trial fitting the drum to ensure it worked I liberally greased the spindle and moving parts before final reassembly.
I cleaned and greased the starboard winch, leaving this one to wind clockwise.
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