Overall Winner of the DAME Award 2010 is the Seldén Reversible Winch of Seldén Mast AB. The Jury felt that this winch would have the largest impact on the leisure marine industry and would appear on many sailing boats in the future.
The key to why this particular reversible winch won such an award from 132 entered products from 19 countries is in its innovative safety. By backing the line off the winch instead of easing it by hand, there is greater safety for the operator.
There are several models featuring the new technology, the R30, R40, R46, R52, and this patented new feature gives a new dimension to the concept of winches.
So how does it work?
The winches are of self tailing type with two gears forward. You start winching clock wise on the fast gear, shift down to low gear by rotating the winch handle anti clock wise. So far, exactly as usual.
The ingenious feature with the new Seldén winches is that you can let the rope out by reversing the winch drum. The purpose made winch handle has a knob which is pushed down with your thumb to prepare the winch for reverse drive.
The winch handle is then rotated clock wise and the rope is eased out. The rope remains in the self tailing jaws all the time which means it’s a one hand operation to trim the sheet, the halyard or the windward guy.
For the cruising sailor, and especially if you have less experienced people on board, the one handed operation means safety – no hands are even close to the drum when easing out the rope.
In rough conditions you can hold on with your free hand. Single handed sailors can steer and trim at the same time
I've been waiting for these winches to become available for purchase in the US but so far nothing, I'm begginning to think this is one more example of "vaporware"... BTW, besides cruising sailors and single-handers, this winches seem very attractive to me in race boats for main sail trimming. On my boat the main is constantly going in-n-out a few inches at a time and having to take it out of the self tailer is a pain. This winch will make it easier for the main trimmer to play the main and traveler simultanously.
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