Avast me hearties - winches to be had!

I wanted to go up the mast to rig a small block (pulley) for a flag halyard.  It's customary to have a small line run from the deck up to the first spreader to show the flag of the host country.  Or to fly the yellow quarantine flag upon arrival.  Peregrine had no such rig.  So I found a cheap awning pulley at Hussein Hardware (great people, btw) and brought out the bosun's chair.

The main halyard was my tow line up and it had to run around the main halyard winch on the mast.  Except the winch didn't turn.  It was locked up tight.  Hadn't been that way last October; salt mist has a way of messing with anything mechanical on a sailboat.  Well, we used it anyway, letting the halyard slide around it before going to the anchor windlass.

That main halyard winch is essential for raising the main sail, which I hope to have some day.  More on that later.  Thus, disassembly and cleaning was necessary.  Between the rainstorms.  Luckily I found a copy of the Lewmar maintenance manual for this exact winch on line.  (Thanks, Soggy Paws!). Took a while to get it off; the top cap doesn't 'fall off' like the manual said.  It's more of a prying with a screwdriver type of operation.

But, I managed to finally get the winch drum off.  The inside looked a little tough, though.

Those two gears at the bottom were the issue.  They didn't want to turn and they sure didn't want to come out.  I had to put the winch handle in and turn the mechanism while prying with a screwdriver to get them out of the housing.

On reassembly (after two thunderstorms) those two gears still wouldn't go in far enough to line up with the hole for their shaft.  (See below). I finally figured out that it wasn't dirt and grime, it was an actual deformation of the whole winch base plate for some reason.  The tolerances are so tight that just a minor bulge in the base causes the problem.  So, out came the 80-grit sandpaper.  And so all afternoon (between rainstorms) I sanded that base plate down to the point where the gears would spin freely.  That accomplished, I now have the best spinning winch in Fiji.