As boats become larger, the size of their anchors increases roughly proportionately, to a point at which they cannot be weighed by hand. Rather than down-size your boat, or use inadequate ground tackle, consider installing a windlass. Windlasses reduce the effort required to raise or lower your anchor and rode with electrical power, or by adding mechanical advantage to your muscle power.

Windlasses are powered by one of three methods: muscle power (manual), electricity, or hydraulic. We'll examine the first two types, as hydraulic windlasses are generally used only on very large vessels. Windlasses generally mount in the center of the boat's foredeck, aligned with an anchor roller of some sort. Most boats have an anchor roller/mount that stores the anchor when not in use. Other boats store the anchor in chocks or a locker on deck. All boats need a roller to pass the anchor rode smoothly over the rail of the boat.

Manual windlasses multiply your strength through mechanical advantage. They also ratchet in one direction so the rode does not run backwards. Because they require you to be on deck to raise or lower your anchor, they're generally limited to small- to medium-sized boats. Their chief advantages are low price, no need for electrical wiring, and their relative simplicity, reducing maintenance or chance of failure while cruising. Manual windlasses come in one and two-speed models, and most are double-action, meaning that the windlass pulls on both forward and backward strokes. Two-speed windlasses are similar to two-speed sheet winches: they have a fast, low-power speed for easy pulling, and a slow, high-power speed for increased power. Some manual windlasses rotate in a vertical axis like a sheet winch. This limits the amount of power they can develop, based on length of the handle, but allows them to be more compact and very simple in construction.

By using a 1/2- to 2-hp electric motor to help weigh anchor, anchoring becomes a push-button operation-mostly. Electric windlasses will raise an anchor at 35'-100' per minute, and can exert a pull of several thousand pounds on your anchor rode. Many windlasses can lower your anchor by push-button as well. Some even drop anchor faster than they retrieve to reduce the time you spend with your finger on the button, either by clutching the shaft so that it free falls, or with a gear change mechanism. Unless they are dual-direction type windlasses, most electric models use a clutch-release.

mechanism to allow the anchor line to pay out. Unfortunately, this requires that someone operates the clutch from the foredeck.

Ideally, windlasses should raise and lower anchor line without operator intervention except to push a button. Anchor rodes can be under great tension, and they pose a risk to fingers, feet, hands, etc. We don't like the idea of transferring a line under tension from a capstan to a chain wildcat in the middle of weighing anchor, or clearing a jam from a balky system. Furthermore, we believe that windlasses should pass the line below decks to a locker, rather than pile the line on deck so that you have to stow it.

For these reasons, we prefer a self-tailing/self-stowing windlass that does not require the operator to come into contact with the rode. Self-tailing windlasses handle three types of rode: rope only, rope and chain, and chain only.

Note: A self-stowing windlass requires that your anchor locker be set up correctly. Specifically, the anchor rode must have a long "fall" so that it doesn't stack up under the incoming rode. A poor anchor locker design will render the installation of an otherwise ideal windlass useless.

Rope Only
Simple rope capstans let you wrap the rode around a drum and use the electric motor for power. By pressing a button on the deck or windlass case, you haul the rode in by hand the same way you would tail a sheet winch. You'll end up with a pile of line on deck that must be coiled and stowed, and you need to go forward in order to operate the windlass. While helpful when anchors are stuck in the bottom, or when single-handing a boat in lots of wind, we don't find rope-capstan windlasses to be much of an advantage.

Rope-only self-tailing windlasses wrap the line around an internal pulley and deposit it below, and are generally restricted to one or two sizes of 3-strand anchor line. You are limited to a length of chain that does not exceed the distance from the windlass to the anchor roller, generally a few feet or less, which we think is inadequate for most rodes.

Rope-chain
Rope-chain wildcats use a single gypsy with normal chain pockets on the perimeter, and V-shaped grooves in the center to handle rope. This requires that your anchor rope be spliced directly to the last link of chain. This may be a source of concern to some boaters, but we've conducted tests that have made us comfortable with this approach. Naturally, the splice should be checked regularly for chafe.

All-chain
All-chain gypsies are self-tailing, due to the nature of the chain as it engages the pockets in the gypsy, and are self-stowing, since the weight of the chain causes it to fall through the chain pipe into the rode locker. All-chain rode is favored by many cruising boaters. It is highly abrasion-resistant, lies on the bottom in most conditions, and is strong. It is also heavy, expensive, and collects mud.

Orientation
Windlasses are categorized as horizontal or vertical. Vertical axis windlasses, with the motor mounted below-decks, are very popular. The line coming from the anchor roller leads back to a capstan or gypsy, wraps around 180°, and feeds through a deck pipe to the anchor locker.

Horizontal axis windlasses, like those from Powerwinch, are commonly used on smaller boats. Very large yacht windlasses and most manual windlasses are also horizontal. The side-to-side alignment of horizontal windlasses is critical; they cannot accept a rode that leads from an off-center angle.

Pulling Power
The amount of pulling power required from a windlass is hotly debated. Windlasses are not intended to pull a boat against 25 knots of wind and 2' chop with the engine in neutral. Windlasses are not designed to break out a heavy anchor 3' under hard sand. They are designed to weigh an anchor and rode that is not under strain, and to provide some tension to break out a firmly set anchor. But, as any text on the subject will tell you, it is the engine's power which moves the boat upwind, and the motion of the boat that should break out the anchor-not the windlass.

Strain on the windlass should be limited to the hanging weight of the anchor and rode. In reality, due to boaters violating the above, it is often greater than this. Therefore, manufacturers tend to recommend windlasses with hefty pulling power so that you have the power if your engine is out, or it is blowing like stink, or your anchor is firmly stuck. Maxwell recommends that the pulling power of the windlass be three times the weight of the anchor and rode, a rule that has served them well. That is, a boat with 250' of 5/16" High Test chain and a 35-lb. CQR would select a windlass with at least 900 lb. of pulling power. (265 lb. of chain plus 35 lb. of anchor, times three).

Chain Size
Since gypsies have to fit the chain they are hauling, windlasses come with gypsies appropriate for the chain that a certain size of boat would be most likely to use. In other words, you won't find a gypsy for 1/2" chain on a small windlass. This encourages boaters to buy the correct size: if you would normally use 5/16" chain, and the windlass will handle it, it will probably work on your boat.