RE: P19 trailer and keel winch upgrades

Eric Johnson (ej@blarg.net)
Wed, 26 Aug 1998 10:22:50 -0700


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West Wight Potter Website at URL
http://www.lesbois.com/wwpotter/
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> >I have found two things about our P19 which are often exhausting to do,
> >especailly in hot, humid weather. They are winching the boat on the
> trailer
> >and winching up the keel. I have recently discovered the smart
> way to get
> the
> >boat on the trailer (without going to an electric winch) is to
> upgrade the
> >manual winch to a stronger model with a better gear ratio. Mounting a
> >stronger and newer one would also greatly lessen any chance of
> failure when
> I
> >am trying to get the boat on the trailer.
>
> If it is getting harder to crank up your keel you need to grab a
> flashlight
> and crawl aft on the starboard quarter berth and check out the two aft
> blocks in the keel raising system. Mine self-destroyed in just
> over a year.
> I replaced them with true wire blocks and was amazed at how much easier it
> is to get the keel up.

Roger that! I did the same thing, and it worked so well I then swapped the
long keel winch handle (which always got wrapped up in the mainsheet) with
the much shorter trailer winch handle, which gives me a lot more leverage
getting the trailer aboard.

I have learned another trick about pulling the boat onto the trailer -
first, back the trailer into the water deep enough to get the bunks wet...
this lubricates them just enough to really make sliding the P19 up a lot
easier.