The RRS James Clark Ross has a purpose built scientific mooring winch, to accommodate the scientific mooring work on the ship.
The winch is capable of deploying moorings of up to 4000 m length and of 14 mm rope diameter. The winch has a SWL of 2to and a line speed of 2m/sec. With this specifications the winch system is capable of deploying and recovering all British Antarctic Survey moorings well within its limits. To be even more flexible the winch system comes in two parts, the traction winch and the storage winch. Each can be used and operated individually or can be coupled together. The traction winch consists of a capstan assembly to handle any weights and a high tension roller assembly with a high tension rope clamp. The storage winch consists of the storage drum assembly and automatic level wind to hold the rope. It also has a low tension roller assembly and a low tension rope clamp.