The feeling of exploring new places is fantastic. All the roads in the country or world aren’t smooth, and experiencing the same route every day is also not fun. But, going to explore the muddy roads can leave your car badly.
If you’re going out on a solo journey with no preparation, the situation can be worse than your imagination.
To give you an experience of exploring all-terrain, you can carry a winch with you. If you’re thinking, “is a winch a necessity for solo driving?” then the obvious answer is yes. You don’t need to call a tow truck or sit aimlessly if you carry a winch with you.
Is A Winch a Necessity For Solo Overlanding
If you’re a solo rider and love to travel a lot, you may have already experienced the car stuck problem on an off-road journey. If not, we wish you not to face this irritating problem in your life.
But you need to know when you can be stuck with such kind of trouble, and a winch can help you get out of that problem.
1. Experiencing Overlanding
Do you like to explore remote places? If campaigning, off-roading, and remote travel are your type, you already know that muds and specks of dirt are typical scenarios of remote roads. Though we’re using a mechanized car to do overlanding, cars can sometimes get stuck in the ground.
If your cars get stuck while you’re on a campaign, the full excitement and fun can be vanished quickly if you don’t have a winch with you. Winch can easily pull off your car from the heavy off-road muds and is an easy and efficient process.
2. Driving In A Muddy Road
You can’t expect smooth pitched roads everywhere. Also, you need to drive your car off-road in an emergency. Most off roads or village roads are extremely muddy and dirty.
There’s always a chance of a car stuck in the muddy village road. A winch can be your best friend to save you in that emergency.
3. Driving in A Snowy or Sandy Road
Climate is changing gradually, and sudden snowstorms have become common nowadays. The day after a storm, the usual scenario is that your car is covered with snow.
Sometimes it’s tough to pull out of the vehicle. This won’t be a problem for you anymore if you have a winch.
4. Overlanding In Hills
We know, overlanding in hills is exciting, and as an overlandander, you may also love to climb the up and down hills with your car.
But, in steep hills, your vehicle may get stuck. Don’t worry if you’re carrying a winch in your car. Winch will give you peace of mind that you don’t need to leave your car alone in the hills.
5. Solo Overlanding
Overlanding is a self-reliant program, and most of the overlanders love to explore the unexplored corner of the world along with their vehicle. But, traveling alone has some disadvantages too. Apart from the fear of robbery or losing the path, you’ll also find yourself helpless if your car is stuck in the jungle.
Winch can be your best support then. Mainly in solo overlanding, the necessity of a winch is only known by a person stuck with his car in a lonely place.
What are the Winch Alternatives for Solo Overlading?
Though winches provide you with the best support to pull out your car from the odd situations, we make mistakes as humans! We mistakenly leave out the winch at home, and sometimes we even forget to buy one!!
If you’re also making the same sort of mistakes, don’t worry, there’re some other alternatives that can help you get out of the bad situations.
1. Shovel
As a widely used and common tool, the shovel is found in most homes. If you’re going out and don’t have any winches, don’t forget to carry a lightweight and durable shovel. Why?
Because you can hop out some hole near your stuck car wheel with a shovel. Holes near the mud will give your wheels an extra thrust to hop over from the mud.
2. Hydraulic Jack and Wood
Dude, don’t say, you don’t carry jack with you. To change your punctured tire, you need to carry this tool – a must one. This hydraulic jack can get your stuck wheel out from the mud and sand.
Move up your wheel vertically using your hydraulic jack from the mud. Now, place 2-3 wood blocks underneath. Low down the wheel, and you’ll get a smooth place to drive out.
3. Tow Strap
To pull out your car from the stuck using a tow strap, you need help! If you’re going out with your friends, attach the tow strap to your friend’s car.
Drive the recovery vehicle slowly and with some extra power. Gotcha and see your car is out of the stuck place.
4. Hand Winch
Hand winch is the last alternative to pull out your vehicle from the stuck position. An anchor point of the hand winch works as a recovery point, but you need to put extra effort and time into hopping out your vehicle if you’re using a hand winch.Visit here to know How to Get a Winch to Spool Evenly
Common Mistakes to Avoid While Using A Winch
“Less care causes more damage” – it’s a universal truth. So you have to handle your winch carefully if you’re not interested in damaging your car or hurting yourself.
To feel safe, here we’ll present the top most common mistakes that a winch user makes.
1. Using Dead Tree
If there’s only a tree in the range of your eyesight and it’s dead, avoid this tree as an anchor. Dead trees are mostly hollow inside, and they can’t provide the required support to pull out your stuck car.
Using a dead tree can crash over your vehicle and worsen the situation than your imagination. Try to use a liveable healthy tree to use as an anchor point or as a helper.
2. Anchoring at a Short Distance
Most people attach their cable with an anchor point in a short distance, and a short distance provides less energy than anchoring at a long distance.
What on earth you’ll do with your rest portion of the cable? Anchor the winch at a long distance to complete the task more efficiently and shortly.
3. Low Weighted Blankets
Can you imagine what will happen if your winch rope breaks or tears down? The possible outcomes are hurting yourself, damage of headlight or hood crushing. These all can happen if you don’t use proper weight blankets.
The ideal weight of the blankets is around 1 kg. Use 1 or 2 proper weighted blankets to reduce the risk of unnecessary injury or damage.
4. Trying Rush Recovery
We know you have come to Overlanding to experience new moments, not to stick with your stuck vehicle. And this thinking leads you to a rush recovery process.
But, a winch is a static recovery device. You need to use the winch slowly and steadily. Heavy shock loads can only give you a breaking tow cable and make the recovery process more difficult. So try softly and steadily.
5. Using Underweight Winch
We’ve already encouraged you to buy a weight winch over your vehicle’s weight. Underweighted winch won’t give you the support that you’re looking for.
Final Words
We hope that you get your answer about, “Is a winch is necessity for solo Overlanding”. Carrying a winch with you always relieves unwanted car stuck situations.
A winch can pull your vehicle out of the mud or sand in a quick time, and you also don’t need to work hard to complete the whole removal process.
