Patent ID: 8052123

Claim:
A sail handling system for a sailing yacht having a headsail, which comprises (a) a pair of power driven winches, one on each side of the yacht, (b) each of said winches having a winding drum for winding and storing a sail handling line, each of said lines being connected to said headsail, (c) a reversible power drive associated with said winches for operating the winding drums thereof in winding and unwinding directions, (d) a line tensioning element associated with each of said winches and operative, when one of said winding drums is operated in an unwinding direction, to apply tension to line being unwound from said drum, (e) said line tensioning element for each winch being independent of the operation of the other winch, and (f) a drive control for automatically causing the drum of one of said winches to operate in a line winding direction while the other of said winches operates in a line unwinding direction.