FISH & BOAT, April 2019- P43 Boating Winch me up Scotty By Peter Ford The Fish and Boat Magazine Project Boat hasThey are a real good looker as well with Quality been a work in progress for the last 9 years. It Stainless steel and anodised aluminium; they are made was bought new from Offshore Marine Masterto withstand the harsh saltwater environment and in Caloundra on the Sunshine Coast and has under-backed with a 5-year warranty. gonemany modifications andupdates over that time. My crew is looking forward to lifting the anchor on These boats have evolved nicely over the years and those cold winter mornings with a flick of a switch. what used to be classed as modifications are now the Chec them ut http://lnestarmarine.com.u/k o o a standard. The first on my wish list back then was upgrading thepedestal seats to seat box/ esky and fridge combo, this gives us 200l for fish, 60l for bait and a 42l fridge forfood, keeping everything well separated. What about drinks you say? Well, the beauty of buying a custom plate boat is we got one of those built into the transom, so your beers don’t get shaken up. Afew years back we upgraded the Lowrance to the bee’s knees at the time, HDS series which will un- dergo a further change this year with the HDS Live series, I’m just waiting on the 3D update to become available early in 2019. The new Lonestar winch. Now, The Fish and Boat project boat, now featuring a new Lonestar Last year we also replaced the ever-reliable Suzuki winch. We’re ready to do battle out on the water and save our 175hp motor with a new lean burn 200hp. This mo- the Captain and crew are happy. toris the largest in the 4 cylinder range, and it delivers energy for pulling up big fish, not anchors. greater performance and is way more economical than theold one. The carpet was also replaced with Deck Armour Flooring, and I can tell you, once you have had it, you will never go back as you can walk around all day in bare feet because it feels good underfoot. The old Galvanised trailer lasted 9 years which is better than most, but a new Redco alloy trailer has been ordered and will be under the boat in the com- ingweeks. The latest addition which has been on my regular crew’s wish list has been the electric anchor winch. We rarely anchor in water over 40m deep, so I’m not sure what they are complaining about, so after much research, we decided upon the Lonestar GX3 winch fora number of reasons. The first of those is the fact that it doesn’t have Freefall, from my research online and via talking with people who fit them, the majority of issues come from winches with this facility. Freefall sound great in the- ory, but it adds another range of componentry to a winch which in turn means more can go wrong. All Lonestar winches are direct drive and do not rely on one-way bearings, magnetic breaks, actuators oradditional gearing for deployment. Simply stated there are fewer parts to fail and no break or removal ofthe solid shaft from the gearbox. Your anchor will deploy at a controlled drop speed every time. This eliminates any possibility of the winch letting go while underway (a potentially life- threatening situation), ensures higher load ratings while at anchor, keeps maintenance to a minimum, avoids chain piling on top of your anchor under de- ployment, and helps to prevent overruns and tangles while deploying the anchor. The winch does have a Manual emergency release should a panic situation occur where you need to drop it fast. The GX3 is recommended for boats from 6-9m, our vessel is 6.5m, so the 1500watt motor de- ploys and retrieves our anchor at a rate of about 46m per minute and does it easily being somewhat larger incapacity to other winches recommended for our boat size on the market. The Mud Magnet does it’s job very well, and the new Lonestar winch has no trouble removing this bad boy from the bottom. See Owners Reviews