The philosophy of sailboat upgrades

[klb67pgh]

I'm a pretty firm believer in life is too short to sail with garbage line on your sailboat. Even a Sunfish deserves a halyard and main sheet upgrade. Even if your budget is tight, someone, somewhere, in the next six months will have line on sale that's a big upgrade from garbage line currently being used. You just have to find it. Do a few lines at a time. It's okay to mix line manufacturers if you find a deal. Be somewhat flexible on color.

With the West Marine Lewmar winch bogo sale going on, I'm trying to convince myself that the philosophy should extend to life is too short to sail with non self tailing winches...Lewmar CST16s would be sooooo nice.

 

[Loren Beach]

We loved our former Niagara 26, for a decade. But if we had known how pleased we would be with the ST winches on our next/current Olson we would have changed them to ST winches in a heartbeat.
That boat had a pair of Lewmar 16 flat top primaries. Depending on room enough for the winch base on the combing, I should have put 30ST primaries on it!

 

[Nick J]

Couldn't agree more! If you're on the fence about self tailers, just do it. On our 1980 25+, self tailing winches was one of the best upgrades we made. The old Barient 10s are not well designed and used a composite base. A few of ours had cracked and one didn't fit well in the drum which added friction and almost completely defeated any mechanical advantage the winch provided.

For line, it gets really difficult to explain to inexperienced crew what line to pull, especially when the instruction is "no, the less dirty one" or "the green on, no not the moldy white one with green, the actual green one". having a variety of colors is almost a safety issue.

 

[tenders]

Another big fan of self-tailers here - I added genoa sheet tailers last year and love them. I'm only, what, 40 years late to this party or so?

There is an abundance of used winches out there from boat salvors and secondhand equipment shops like the famous Minney's in Newport Beach, CA, and this guy on the East Coast, who has an amusing/interesting FB page documenting some of his boat decompositions under the "Anchors and Oars" name.

Nautical Home Decor & Used Sailboat Parts Store, Anchors & Oars

We sell new & used sailboat parts as well as nautical home decor such as pillows, reclaimed furniture & wall art. We take wood & parts from boats and create items for use in & around your home. We sell sails, all parts off of boats and we also recover abandoned & unwanted boats from marinas...

www.sailboatparts.com

My winches are vintage 1980 Barient 40ST. Turns out that some of the plastic parts are not available for my very early and possibly first-generation variant. The parts didn't really need to be replaced, but they were interesting and relatively simple early 3D printing projects. The later generations of Barient 40ST winch are all still well-supported from what I understand.

 

[klb67pgh]

I had a pair of Lewmar ST16s in my hand at Anchors and Oars around New Year's a few years ago and put them back. Frankly the March West Marine Lewmar Bogo sale is about the same price as pair of used winches most times that might still need to be serviced.