Thanks, everyone, for your remarks.

Lighter -- A documentary video is in the works. We will be working on a windlass while singing these songs and capturing, well, whatever we can capture. Looking to see what insights might be revealed from doing it. Stay tuned for the release of the movie!

I have a photo from an old Mystic Seaport magazine of Stan Hugill leading a song at the Charles W. Morgan's windlass at the first Sea Music Festival (1980). I assume (though it's not clear from the photo) that they all had to pretend to use the windlass (i.e. with no old attached).

Hugill's audio recorded remarks from 1980 or 1981 (I forget which) include his statement that he never had an opportunity to use a windlass of that size. He had just used the smaller variety on "coasting" vessels. One such vessel, we can infer, was the (no longer existing) brig Unicorn, which he sailed in during the 1976 Op Sail in New York. Hugill also related a failed attempt to operate Unicorn's windlass while singing on that occasion. However, Tom Sullivan sang a chanty on Unicorn's windlass for the _Salt Atlantic Chanties_ album in 1979.

So, Hugill's various published statements about windlasses, which are good, nevertheless would seem to reflect what he had heard or read as opposed to direct experience of operating this large / 19th c-style device while singing chanties. (The recordings with are on cassette tapes in the Mystic Seaport archive.)

Rick -- One of the side purposes of getting this out was to furnish the examples for practicing by the crew that will be filmed for the documentary, so it's all steaming ahead quickly!

Part of my preparation process for filming.