No doubt some of you are cracking up over that title...

I have a manual windlass... and while the anchor raising function was working fairly well... the clutch and gypsy did not work right. Last year I put on all new rode... and sized it properly to the gypsy... that meant that the chain slipped less often than when using the previous rode... as the G4 chain finally fit just right. But I had to let out chain by hand... Not too terrible, but it left something to be desired, and was a bit of a safety hazard.

I heavily lubricated the cones for the clutch, but that didn't seem to free anything.

I would try to work the gypsy clutch just a bit here and there, but it was still tight, until just recently when I started hitting it with PB Blaster. A few days of dousing it with this penetrating oil... and working it a bit... finally paid off... it just dropped the anchor like advertised... Oh what a wonderful experience.

Now I can also probably pull the clutch and gypsy off and replace any badly rusted parts... up until now, the only solution was to saw through the shaft to get these parts off.

Ahhh PB Blaster... wonderful stuff. That and WD-40. Since I got the boat years ago... slowly and surely, I have freed things, repaired things, replaced lines and blocks, and slowly made her a nicer boat... she seems to sail better for it too. No doubt she enjoys that attention. GRIN.