We’re still (anxiously) waiting on the Coast Guard to get their shit together! “Technical difficulties” is our latest update on expediting our paperwork. So, while we wait at the marina we’ve continued to work through some projects that were a little lower on the priorities list – Servicing our winches!

By far one of the worst jobs yet…slimy green gunk coated all over the gears, even worse is taking these apart and then putting them back together. Although ours appear to look just fine on the outside, dirt and metal grind down every time it’s used. So it starts to become sluggish if not serviced regularly (2x a year) and corrosion sets in.

Let’s start with supplies, have these ready:

• Disposable gloves
• Small scrub brush
• 5 gal bucket to wash parts in, we had two ready so we could wash in one and carry the clean parts back up.
• Extra towels – its a messy job.
• 1” paint brush to coat the winch grease
• Hammer + flat head screwdriver

As first-timers, we learned opening up the winch differs, so we had to do a little bit of research for ours. Luckily we found the original maintenance and service manual plus some quick Youtube help. Once we pulled everything apart and put it into the bucket for cleaning, we let the gears sit/soak in the parts cleaner for just a few minutes. Super tedious, but you must clean every little inch of each part then a quick rinse. As you can see from our pics, someone over greased our winches on the last service – yuck! So the wash process was more extensive. Then dry and inspect each part very thoroughly before putting any grease on them. We used a small 1″ brush to LIGHTLY spread an even coat – too much grease = a bad thing!

Now, we reassemble. Basically putting all the gears/bearings back together in successive order. I’d highly suggest using your phone to capture the disassembly step by step, it’ll make the reassembly much quicker! Wishing we had done this, especially when it came time for the second round, port side.

Until next year! Don’t forget to keep your winches happy 🙂

Cheers from the marina!