Veloce is equipped with a pair of Harken self-tailing winches 32 on the cabin top at each side of the companionway and a pair of larger Harken self-tailing winches 40 at each side of the cockpit.
Winches are critical on any boat over a certain displacement and sail area, they are steroids to your muscles if sailing short handed or even more alone. I, for example, use them to mooring, rotating the hull in a harbour, lifting anchor on top of all they are designed for. They are subject to heavy loads and exposed to the elements, in other words they require some tender loving care.
Here how I go about:
Disassemble them from the hull, taking a picture at any element I remove to be sure to be able to re-assemble them. There are a number of available tutorials from Harken on Youtube that apply even if the winch size is different and it is a matter of 3 minutes per winch to get them apart, with a large flat screwdriver as only tool.
The base of the winch can only be removed from inside the hull, but I find this not needed as all mechanical part can be taken off and cleaned elsewhere.
Wait for a rainy winter evening, which is not a big of a wait in the region where I live. Choose a good audio-book and group all parts per winch on a desk to be sure not to mix them up. I clean each part with some paper from the obvious dirt, apply some degreaser with a small paintbrush on all parts and dry them out with paper removing the remaining dirt. I normally need to repeat this process a few times to be able to get each part clean.
I clean with some degreaser the base of the winch on the boat as well and dry it properly before re-assembling all parts. I then apply
Harken winch white grease from on the cogs and Harken winch oil on all bearings and friction prone parts.
Re-assembling is pretty easy as well and I have my pictures showing how things looked like!
Job done!