Courtesy of Lewmar

Lewmar's updated Evo winch range, uses the same working components of earlier winches, but the stainless steel cap/stripper arm was redesigned to prevent inadvertent line snags. Directional arrows on the cap will help novice crews.

Lewmar's Evo Winch
Following on the heels of Harken's Radial launch, the engineers at Lewmar revealed their Evo Winch range at the Marine Equipment Trade Show in Amsterdam in November. It's the company's first-although subtle-winch redesign in 20 years. Thus, Lewmar's calling it "evolutionary." Key improvements include easier installation, new sizes, new finishes, and new styling. Internally, they've retained the same components.
As it was for Harken, Lewmar's Evo development partly resulted from a demand from boatbuilders for a quick-install design. Lewmar's solution is stud-style fastners that screw into the bottom of the bronze base plate. No disassembly is required to install the winch into pre-drilled holes. While they were redesigning this element, Lewmar engineers took the opportunity to tweak a few other components, striving to simplify user maintenance and safety, as well. With the Evo (as it is with previous Lewmar winches), tools are not required to strip the winch: unscrew the top cap by hand and remove the drum to get at the bearing cages and gear clusters. It's impossible to put it back together incorrectly.

For safety considerations (and aesthetics), the stripper arm completely covers the winch top, which Lewmar says prevents a line from getting trapped above the jaws. And for inexperienced crews, they've added a directional arrow on the winch top, showing which way to properly load a line. www.lewmar.com         

The Winch Balancing Act: Power versus Speed
With winches, speed and power are inversely related. Faster trimming means less power; high power begets slow trimming. The key determinants of winch/line speed are the gear ratio and the drum size (each revolution of the winch pulls an amount of line equal to the circumference of the drum). A larger drum pulls more line per revolution, but does so with less mechanical advantage (i.e., it requires more effort from the grinder). Here's a quick comparison of a few comparable models from Harken and Lewmar, using figures provided by the manufacturers. The power ratio figures are calculated for a 10-inch handle.

Model                            Drum CiRC. (in)    Wt. (lbs.)     Gear Ratio (2nd)    Power Ratio (2nd)
Harken  40.2STA                 9.89                     8.4                 6.28                       39.9
Lewmar 40ST                      9.15                   10.7                 5.80                       40.20
Harken 50.2STA                13.6                     13.2               10.9                         50.40
Lewmar 50ST                    11.5                     19.4                 9.0                         48.60