Jere Lull wrote:

In article ,
Ruskie wrote:

I'm trading up to a 42' cruising sailboat, and I have narrowed the
search down to a used Pacific Seacraft, Shannon, or Valiant.

Numerous salespeople have lectured that, despite being big and
strong, I won't be able to, or want to, use a manual windlass with
this size of boat.

Acutally, I do want to use a manual windlass, if possible.

Any opinions?

Remember that you sometimes need/want to reset the anchor, and that
will often be in a deep anchorage after a long day, you're tired, and it
has to be done NOW.

Perhaps we've been lucky, but we haven't had that happen yet (knock
wood). We rarely anchor in deep anchorages, we don't generally do
long days, and our anchor rarely needs to be reset. Less than 5 times
in 6 years.

Besides which, it IS a windlass and you don't have to pull the anchor
up by hand.