Seen the commercial cranks for down hauling race sails. They any good ? Any design for home made down hauler.

Get in touch with Tom Radich, he is a member of Safety Bay Windsurfing Club and works with WWA. Tom has designed and refined downhaul winching systems for some time now, they are very popular with the ladies. I don't have his phone number but I am sure he is a visitor to this site, we all follow the 'green arrows'

Cheers

If you want to find out more about hand cranking, head over to the kite forum!

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hinch said...

Seen the commercial cranks for down hauling race sails. They any good ? Any design for home made down hauler.

Resurrecting an old thread. I bought a manufactured downhaul crank. It worked fine, definately helps downhauling bigger race sails easier for me and easier to tune too. However, unbenounched to me a friend of mine built a crank out of wood and a bent iron bar. Fortunately I sold the crank I bought to another sailor soon afterwards.

The handmade crank has an insert going up the mastbase to keep it stable. The commercial crank had a universal join that had both euro and u-cup connections. The handmade crank is more stable at cranking as it doesn't move around like the uni does however the handmade crank won't fit up my small Chinook extension. Not a big issue as the smaller sails don't need mega downhaul.

I had to get a crank as I have North Warp 7.8 and I could not physically get enough downhaul on it without the extra leverage.

Try here also:

www.seabreeze.com.au/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=35415

here's one from the old thread and specs doesn't have to be the same as what was
written..but i found out later if your back doesn't hurt a wooden handle and a downhaul line rubbed with wax works just fine

Busterwa,
....... I'm impressed.

However, I reckon the "cheese grating toilet paper" (avatar) must be your finest achievement

Are these things really necessary?

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ikw777 said...

Are these things really necessary?

Depends, I have to be careful with my back now so I'll be using mine. As I wrote before I have a North Warp that I could not downhaul correctly without a crank. AFAIK North bast bases come with a form of lever crank built into them.

The crank multiplies the leverage many times making downhaul and then tuning easier. As most windsurfing experts say the biggest rigging mistake people make is not enough sail downhaul, then a tool to make the job easier is probably not necessary but useful.