This morning I finished the installation of the electric drives for my Andersen 40ST winches. Now I have a little button next to the winch instead of a winch handle (I do still have the handles). I think short tacking just got a lot easier

The install involved removing the old 2" thick teak winch pads and replacing them with 1-1/16" thick teak pads. That was required to get the total deck thickness below the 45 mm maximum for the winch drives. Next I bolted the new winch base plates to the winch pads. The electric drives came with a new drive gear for the winch, so I had to partly disassemble both winches to install that gear. Then I attached the winch drives to the base plates and bolted the winches to the plates. After that was done I installed a new battery box to hold the additional batteries needed to power the winches, installed a switch for the winches and then put in the #1/0 cables to link the new and old batteries and connect the winch drives and control boxes to the batteries. Finally I put the switches in and tested the system. The winches work like a charm