Bosun's log

We don't know, but we assume Robinetta's bronze winches are original. They are very light, single speed and not self-tailing but they work well. Alison read that winches should be serviced annually so she took the port one apart, removed what looked like dog-hair, cleaned it up and greased it with white marine grease and put it back together.

On the trip back from Burnham it was slipping uncontrollably – one of the major factors that made us give up trying to sail into the Spitway.

I knew absolutely nothing about how winches work. Alison found a couple of really good references on the web – a great cutaway drawing of a modern winch in "This Old Boat" and a thread on the WoodenBoat forum about fettling an old bronze winch. We learned a new word – "pawl". Alison understood this, having already looked inside. I made sure I noted what was being said.

So we know next time, I'll try and explain how our winches work. There are two ratchet mechanisms. One at the top allows the handle to rotate backwards and then locks in the forward position so the rope can be wound on. One at the bottom allows the winch body to rotate forwards and then locks in the reverse position to maintain tension on the rope. The two ratchets share a common design. The rim of the cylinder or body of the winch is toothed and the pawls are metal bars which are pushed into the gaps between the teeth with springs. The bottom pawls are joined by a single spring and slide into a square hole through the centre of the axle. The top pawls each have their own spring which sits between the pawl and the axle. The "lid" of the winch, which incorporates the handle, has a slot for the top pawls to keep them in place.

When we took it apart again several things became apparent. Firstly the grease in the pawl slots was too viscous for the springs to push against. Secondly the whole inside was still quite dirty. Also the pawls and the teeth were quite worn, in a way perfectly described in the forum.

We cleaned everything up and used a small file to de-burr and take off the deep pits in the pawls. I didn't want to take any metal away from the teeth so we did the very minimum to them. I eased out the springs a little, partly because they looked very compressed, and partly to compensate for the metal I had removed from the pawls.

Then we used engine oil to lubricate the pawls and a different marine grease (the one that we squeeze into the propeller stuffing box) which is translucent – like thin Vaseline (and won’t have a chalky residue like the white stuff) – to pack the axle. We made sure that the pawls would spring out when pushed in and were running freely in their slots.

When we put the whole thing back together it clicked reassuringly and seems to hold fine with a load on it. Hopefully a success! We will do the other one if we have no more problems with this one over the season.