Winch Upgrade 32.2st

I picked up a pair of lightly used harken 32.2st’s with adjustable jaws to replace my older Barbarrosa/Harken 32’s that slipped in the jaws a lot.  According to winch guru Craig at Harken, who was there when they bought Barbarossa, Harken couldn’t make the jaws spring load adjustable at the time due to patents held by other winch manufacturers.  My old Barbarossa’s are really about the same winch with little or no jaw adjustability.  I tried various diameters and different ropes to compensate, but they still slipped in the jaws a lot.   Looked at jaw kit updates from the early 90’s that didn’t quite fit correctly.  PIA…moving on.

Harken 32.2st’s fit the diameter of existing Laser 28 winch pads nicely.  You have to drill a couple new holes in the center stem as well as the winch pad to through bolt to coaming.  It appears that three of the original holes in the winch pad line up with three of the 32.2 stem holes.  So you can attach the stem to pad with three m6 short screws, then drill the two new holes that will bolt through the deck.  In my case I used some g10 backing/reinforcement plates bonded to boat.  I incorporated some Dyneema hand holds into the G10 below deck.  

You still have your existing bolts in from below deck to tapped winch pad.  So in the end you have four bolts to the deck…two of which are through the stem, and three screws to the just the winch pad.  Be warned, you may have to do some grinding on the stem to make the bolt head sit flush where one of the new holes just happens to be on the edge of a drain ridge on the stem.  It was a pain in the ass, but doable.