Do you keep your lovingly maintained sailboat in a slip or on a mooring ball but want to protect your hard work from the elements as much as possible? Covers on your winches can protect the plated parts from corrosion, the plastic parts from UV damage, the bearings and pawls from rainwater and salt water spray, and keep everything cleaner if bird droppings are a problem for you.
The winches on your sailboat are the workhorses of your rig. They do the heavy lifting and make your job as skipper easier so you can enjoy the ride. They’re also the most expensive hardware aboard so it only makes sense to take good care of them. In this post, I describe how they work and how to maintain them in peak condition. If you’re a beginner to winch maintenance, this post will bring you up to speed with the savviest captains.
Think swing keel cables rarely break? Think again. Following is a small sample of the confessions of sailboat owners in a certain online forum over the past few years.
The idea for this little solution came to me as I was making the crib board storage solution. The width of the vinyl channel that I fabricated for that project makes for a tension fit with a winch handle.
The $tingy Sailor 