Galley Maid Windlass info

[Hat4Shay]

I'm with Ralph on Ideal Windlasses... I just went through the windlass nightmare from hell rebuild, but mainly because the guy at Schaffer, (aka Ideal) doesn't know jack about the older models. In fact, they didn't even know my model existed and gave us bad info, bad parts and caused a lot of stress and wasted time and money. If you have an older Ideal and you don't have the paperwork, then I'd encourage you to look at a replacement. 7 months of misery... I really wish I'd bought the new one, but hind sight is 20/20.

I decided to rebuild mine vs replace it based on that bad info, fyi. Schaffer told me that the extra "ratchet" gear in the box was so the anchor could be manually ratcheted up by putting bars in the capstone. That isn't true. But I'm stuck with it now. It will power down, but I was told a controlled freefall is better. I can control it because mine has a handwheel on top of the capstone, not a nut. The other main reason I kept mine. I can quickly loosen or tigten the capstone without tools. =-)

However, I know lots of folks that have Galleymaid and they work great! And, Rick at Galleymaid won't steer you wrong. Great guy and super knowledgeable and he stands behind his work. A rare find in today's world.

[bostonhatteras]

Not jumping into the fray on modern versus old design windlasses however I will say that the control systems from AutoAnchor are incredible and work with virtually any windlass. I just finished setting up the parameters for rode on my new maxwell and the AutoAnchor wired and wireless windlass controls are simply amazing. Preset drops, preset anchor docking distances, full manual operation, operate the windlass sitting on the head JK. You'd need to install a magnet and sensor in the gypsy/case but I think it might be worth it for you.