{"id":161903,"date":"2026-02-02T06:35:06","date_gmt":"2026-02-02T06:35:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/?p=161903"},"modified":"2026-02-02T08:44:22","modified_gmt":"2026-02-02T08:44:22","slug":"do-we-need-to-rethink-our-relationship-with-electric-winches-nikki-henderson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/comment\/do-we-need-to-rethink-our-relationship-with-electric-winches-nikki-henderson-161903","title":{"rendered":"Do we need to rethink our relationship with electric winches \u2013 Nikki Henderson"},"content":"Boat owners, future boat owners, dreamer boat owners \u2013 the most common question they ask me is: \u2018What\u2019s going to make me and my boat safer?\u2019 They want to know what my one piece of crew-overboard gear is that i\u2019d recommend, my thoughts on which sea survival course is the best, or an instruction manual for emergency situations.\r\n\r\nIn other words they\u2019re looking for a quick fix. i\u2019ve got a bugbear here. you cannot buy safety. you cannot shortcut safety. safety has to be earned, and that takes time. gear and certificates don\u2019t make you safer \u2013 not in isolation anyway.\r\n\r\nYou need another key ingredient. So what is that? What actually makes you a safer sailor?\r\n\r\nIt\u2019s true that lifejackets<\/a>, drogues<\/a>, sea survival courses, an evacuation plan, knowing where the \u2018arm\u2019 button is on the EPIRB\u2026 all these things are important. but what is more important?\r\n\r\nSailing. the number one thing to up your safety game is simple: sail more, and get better at it. take performance boats. a common justification for buying the same length boat for double the price is speed: \u2018by choosing the performance option we\u2019ll be able to outrun bad weather.\u2019\r\n\r\nBut the lightest, best-designed hull on the market won\u2019t help you escape the storm unless you know how to handle it. i love performance boats. i also think fitting out your boat with good equipment is not only a safer choice, but more enjoyable to use.\r\n\r\nAnd yes, investing time and money to take safety courses is prudent and necessary. but some owners spend hundreds of thousands on upgrading their boats \u2013 adding carbon rigs, nav systems, and 3di sails \u2013 yet hesitate to invest in a single day of professional coaching.\r\n\r\nJust imagine how much faster and safer they\u2019d be if they swapped the equivalent cost of one sail upgrade for top-class training. sometimes people justify an option like a carbon rig on safety grounds, because it reduces weight aloft. but then they reef<\/a> early because they don\u2019t have the sailing skills to push the boat to the edge.\r\n\r\nArticle continues below...<\/em>\r\n\r\n[collection]\r\n\r\nThus, they probably wouldn\u2019t escape the storm anyway, and they certainly wouldn\u2019t see any of the slight gains of carbon vs aluminium rig (as a side note, the simple act of reefing early is a far cheaper way of achieving the same effect!). this all circles back to that old argument: qualifications versus experience.\r\n\r\nWho\u2019s safer, the sailor with a licence but no experience or the sailor with 10,000 miles and no certificate? the answer is neither. what matters is whether they can handle a boat efficiently and sensibly. and there\u2019s only one way to know that \u2013 go sailing with them.\r\n\r\nI still remember a delivery from Gosport to Liverpool for the 2017\/18 Clipper Race<\/a> start. On board was a full amateur crew, a few of whom had done extra training as coxswains so they could take over if anything happened to me.\r\n\r\nSo i tested them: i threw bob, our human-sized dummy, overboard and pretended it was me. they knew the theory. they\u2019d drilled the procedure dozens of times. but when it came to turning the boat back downwind to the \u2018casualty\u2019 they couldn\u2019t get the boat to turn.\r\n\r\nMinutes passed and the dummy drifted out of sight, until someone finally realised easing the mainsheet might help. only after an hour of search pattern practice was bob eventually found. it was a reality check for all of us.\r\n\r\nAll the theory in the world needs to be underpinned by real sailing skills \u2013 and those skills need constant honing. for any sailor who wants to be safe, the job of learning, reflecting, and improving is never done.\r\n\r\nSo for anyone considering how to make themselves or their boat safer, i\u2019d suggest putting as much time (and money if necessary) as you can into your actual sailing education. be picky about the sailing school you choose.\r\n\r\nLots of national sailing programmes do not include any practical sailing as part of their syllabuses. also remember, the quality of the education is ultimately a result of the quality of your instructor and not the sailing brand or programme endorsing them.\r\n\r\nIf you\u2019re interested in performance sailing and short of cash, go club racing regularly to see how people don\u2019t just sail fast, but also operate within the chaos of close quarters boat manoeuvres, and the constant stream of inevitable mistakes. because in the end, gadgets, miles, and certificates don\u2019t make a safe sailor. time on the water does.\r\n\r\n
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It\u2019s rare that emails landed in my inbox with a subject like \u2018MAIB reports on fatal sailing accident\u2019. But a recent Monday was one of them. In August this year a 74-year-old Kiwi skipper died after getting \u2018entangled in a powered winch\u2019 on his 57ft steel monohull Mollie. He was a few miles offshore from the Needles, en-route to Poole, having sailed to Europe from New Zealand. The MAIB report detailed what happened: a 24V electric winch with an intermittently defective control switch started turning unexpectedly as the skipper was removing a rope. His right hand got caught and he was pulled violently against the winch drum. With no emergency switch close by to cut the power to the winches, the crew could not free him in time, and he died. It\u2019s a harrowing read. But, read through it we must, without judgement or ego. Because we learn by reflecting on tragedy. Electric winches are divisive. On one side, they make sailing dramatically more accessible, especially for those who aren\u2019t so physically able. But they also carry serious risks. Electric winches can create an unhealthy disconnect between sailors and their boats and nature. They mask the loads involved, they tempt people into relying on power rather than technique, and they make mistakes happen faster, with more force and with greater consequence. In Mollie\u2019s case, these consequences were fatal. So, how do we weigh the danger against the upside? Some might say keep it manual. But that\u2019s unrealistic. Once you\u2019ve used a power tool, it\u2019s hard to even fathom going back to the arduous, by-hand method. You\u2019re going to be hard pushed to persuade a tree surgeon to swap their chainsaw for a handsaw. Article continues below… That comparison is useful, though. Everyone instinctively knows a chainsaw is dangerous. But electric and manual winches look almost identical. They operate in similar ways. Most have no automatic kill switch, no emergency stop beyond a fuse (which definitely won\u2019t blow before someone is dragged into the drum). It\u2019s too easy to underestimate the risk. In September I was teaching a 19-year-old who\u2019d only ever sailed with manual winches how to operate a boat equipped with electrics. She had bad habits to unlearn, and to her frustration I asked her to repeat manoeuvres until she did them safely. By the end of the day she was ready to throw the entire winch at me. She\u2019d been using winches for years \u2013 why wasn\u2019t that enough? Two things struck me. First, how little distinction she made between a manual winch and an electric one. To her they were essentially the same piece of kit. And muscle memory is only useful if it\u2019s correct. We\u2019d save a lot of grief if our training systems taught safe winch and rope handling to a consistent standard from the very first course \u2013 with consideration for the fact that every sailor will almost certainly apply those handling skills to an electric winch one day in the future. So, what …Continue reading »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4389,"featured_media":161904,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[969],"tags":[1633],"review_manufacturer":[],"acf":[],"introduction":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161903"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4389"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161903"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161903\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":161905,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161903\/revisions\/161905"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/161904"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161903"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161903"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161903"},{"taxonomy":"review_manufacturer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.yachtingworld.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review_manufacturer?post=161903"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}