Sheet Winch Question?

[STLMac21]

Hi

Excuse my ignorance. I have searched the web for information about this piece of hardware on my Mac21 and have found nothing to help. Perhaps I am using the wrong terminology.

Is this a sheet winch? How do I use it?

[sailingdog]

It appears to be one... but where is the winch in relation to the cockpit? A wider-angle view, from higher up, would help identify and place the object in relation to the rest of the boat.

[danjarch]

There should be a handle that can slide into the square cut out on the side of the top rim. See if you can find the handle

[STLMac21]

Yes, here is the handle and a couple more pics to show the location. I'm also including a couple of pics of where I think the spinnaker might fly? Any help would be greatly appreciated. And I haven't even begun to ask about the boom vang yet. :-)

[sailingdog]

Yup. it's definitely a very old, non-self-tailing, sheet winch. Wrap the line around it in a clockwise direction two to three times, starting at the base of the drum and wrapping up the drum...insert handle, turn handle and pull on tail of jib sheet to winch. Hope that helps.

[danjarch]

The jib sheets goes through the fair lead on the jib car ( that the donut on the rail just ahead of the winch ). Then the sheet wraps around the winch and is made off on the cleet behind it. The fair lead on the cabin top looks to be for the roller furling line coming aft.

[STLMac21]

The rope doesn't seem to grip on it. Also, is that the correct location for the sheets to attach. I always pictured the location being in closer to the mast, like in the pics that I called Spinnaker? Does that look like where the spinnaker attaches?

[STLMac21]

Ok, danjarch, thanks! Crazy though, so each time I tack I have to tie to the cleat? so to release on a tack I uncleat it, manually unwrap around the winch then winch on the other side and cleat on the other side? Not much of a race setup ay?

[danjarch]

You have to wrap the line around the winch drum two or three times. The spinakker sheets should go to the block ( pullies ) on the back of the boat.

[STLMac21]

Ok, I wanted to throw another question in. I can tell where the boom vang attaches to the boom. There is a cleat at the base of the mast that I assume is a downhaul. Does it double as the other end of the boom vang?