←Back to projects

August 2021

Wake Winch

A DIY beach wake winch built for under a tenth the cost of a commercial unit — designed in Fusion 360 and fabricated over a couple of summer weekends.

Fusion 360FabricationWeldingMechanical Design
On this page

Project Origin

During the spring of 2021, a friend sent me a video of someone using a $10,000+ beach wake winch to launch people off a jump. It looked like a lot of fun, and I figured we could get the same experience for less than a tenth of the cost if I designed and built one myself — so I did, over the course of a couple of weekends that summer.

Build cost
<10% of commercial
Engine
16 HP
Top speed
~15 MPH
Rope
300+ ft Dyneema

Design & Construction

I started by designing the parts that required fabrication in Fusion 360: the frame and the spool.

The frame is built from sections of 1.25″ steel square tubing welded together. The spool is two 20″-diameter plates of ¼″ aluminum mounted between sections of ½″ galvanized steel conduit and held together with ½″ threaded rod — the conduit keeps the rope from rubbing and potentially fraying on the threaded rod. The spool rods were initially 12″ in diameter, but I dropped that to 10″ during the build to increase the relative torque applied to the rider. A 1″ shaft with a ¼″ keyway runs through the spool, and each end rides on a slot-mounted pillow bearing block bolted to the frame. A sprocket for #40 roller chain is mounted on the left side of the spool, driven by a 16 HP engine through a torque converter.

The completed winch — DuroMax engine, the spool wound with Dyneema rope, and the welded steel frame.
The completed winch — DuroMax engine, the spool wound with Dyneema rope, and the welded steel frame.
The drivetrain: the engine spins a torque converter, which turns the spool sprocket through #40 roller chain.
The drivetrain: the engine spins a torque converter, which turns the spool sprocket through #40 roller chain.

We used the winch several times before the summer was over. On the water it reached speeds of ~15 MPH, in line with my calculated estimates. Because the cheapest engine I could quickly get on Amazon was used, it occasionally struggled with torque — which is why I decreased the spool diameter by 2″ after the initial test. A future version would benefit from a power-unit upgrade if the goal was to really launch people off jumps; otherwise, it has plenty of power for standard wake winching.

Demo

Here's a test run on the water:

Parts List

←Back to projects