Wellcraft Boat Owners Forum

Have a 2005 290 Coastal. Have had issues with the windlass (Maxwell Freedom 500) ever since I bought the boat a couple years ago. I figured it was just an old windlass..... When pulling anchor up, it sounds like it is struggling, I see the Voltage on my gauges drop, and if I pull too long without giving it a break, it pops the breaker. In shallow water, its not too bad, but if anchoring in 60 + ft of water for fishing its a real chore to get the anchor back up.

Finally getting around to replacing it, was going to go with the RC6-8. But as I started looking into it, I think my problem might be undersized cables to the windlass. It all looks original OEM, but cable is undersized per windlass manual. I only have AWG 4 cables. And when you add up the distance from the batter to switch, switch to windlass, windlass to neg terminal, neg terminal back to battery, its around 60'. the freedom 500 and the RC6-8 would need a min AWG 2 cable for that distance.

Anyone else had this issue? Or what size cable do you have on the 290 coastal to the windlass?

I agree that your issue is the cables. I would leave the windlass and replace the wiring and see what happens. Issue is undersized wiring can damage the windlass but the cables will need to be changed either way.

2012 Coastal 290 here.

It's also possible that the current demands of the windlass increased as it aged.... more friction from the bearings, gearing, etc.

In general though I think that there are areas where Wellcraft was too conservative with wiring size. Thankfully they did a good job of protecting the wiring everywhere with the right breaker/fuse sizes. I'm tracking a problem currently where current stops flowing to the house circuits from the engines when houe batteries are depleated. Current working theory is that wiring and the self-reset breaker is undersized for the charge rate that AGM batteries are able to accept.