Homemade windsurfing downhaul winch

Windsurfing downhaul winch

Downhauling large windsurf sails takes a lot of effort if you use the sit on the floor, foot on the mast base and pull method. I'd seen downhaul winches for sale online at what seemed like quite a lot of money so decided to build my own from scrap I had lying around.

The first thing was to get a Europin to fit into my mast bases. I had an old UJ which I would never use as it is pretty ancient and doesn't have a safety strap. So I scrapped it to get the Europin off. This also yielded a very nice stainless steel washer.

Once I had the Europin, I found a metric bolt that would fit it (M8 x 1.25 I believe) and welded that to a thickish washer of 30mm diameter.

I then found a piece of strong tube with outside diameter 30mm and 25mm inside. None of these measurements are critical, you could use a slighter smaller or larger tube. I cut a 250mm length off and welded the bolt/washer part to it.

Then I screwed on the Europin and the nice thick stainless washer from the old UJ.

The next job was to drill a hole through the side of the tube. My handle was going to be made from 12mm mild steel rod, so I drilled a 12.5mm hole.

I cut a piece of 12mm rod and marked with chalk where I thought the bends should go.

Then I heated the rod.

And bent it to shape

At this point I realised I had made the handle too big and that it would foul on the sail during use. Rather than start all over again, I just cut a piece out of the centre section of the handle and welded it back together.

I found two washers with 12mm holes in them and welded them onto the handle either side of the pipe.

The final metalwork job was to drill a small 6mm hole through the rod so that the downhaul line can be fed through to hold it in place. I was very careful to get rid of any sharp edges around the hole as I don't want to be buying any more downhaul lines than I already do.

I gave the winch a good clean up with a wire brush and a quick coat of silver paint to tidy it up.

It works well and I find it is easier to tune sails more accurately using it. It also saves a lot of effort.

• Total build time - 45 minutes
• Material cost - nothing
• Tools used - hacksaw, mig welder, grinder, drill, large blowlamp, hammer.

I enjoyed this project. Always nice to be doing something windsurfing related.