Pain in the windlass

[gauvins]

Boat will be back on the water today, after 3 years on the hard. Our windlass stopped working white raising our ground tackle. Lifted 20 meters. I stopped to realign the chain on the ground. The windlass no longer responds. Relays work. My bet is that it is the brushes... Again.

Will be the fourth time in 15 years that I'll have to remove the windlass from the deck to have it serviced.

Fed up. Googled hoping to find something that works reliably.

Is there a consensus on what would be the best option? For a 13M sailboat.

Based on my (limited) experience, reliability and serviceability would top the list (i.e will generally work, and if not, parts are easy to access and spares not too difficult to get).