REMOVING A FROZEN ANCHOR SHACKLE AND SWIVEL

I recently mentioned the anchor swivel's pin that was approaching a "yikes" moment. Since I had a spare on board I looked to replace it. It had been attached for as long as I have owned the boat and normally should have been a five minute replacement job. Except for one thing the pin of the shackle that attached the swivel to the anchor was seized and no amount of PB Blaster, wrenches and even  micro torch supplied heat could move that shackle pin. Looks like that five minute job just got a little longer since I was going to have to cut this shackle off too in order to replace the swivel. But, what to use? It's a tight space around where the anchor and shackle lay. A hacksaw would be awkward to use in the confined space take quite a bit of time even if I had a new blade which I did not. Enter the Dremel 200-1/15 Two-Speed Rotary Tool Kit with a pack of heavy duty cutting disks. I am able to power the Dremel a number of ways on board. One is with my on onboard Honda EU 2000 generator which is really over kill for the power requirements of the Dremel Tool. Another is with the AIMS 1500 Watt 48 volt Inverter I installed last year. Though for most jobs I just use the 200 watt 12 volt Powerstar Inverter that I bought back in the 1980's. It not a pure sinewave inverter but, it powers the Dremel Tool quite nicely for all sorts of quick projects.  The Dremel made short work of cutting through the swivel that was attached to the seized anchor shackle as shown here:

Once the old swivel was out of the way I could start to work on the seized anchor shackle.  I probably should have used a  Dremel 1-1/4-Inch Reinforced Cut-Off Wheel but, even the Dremel 420 Heavy Duty Cut-Off Wheels  I used did the job. Though I did have one or two disks break in the process. They still cut through the swivel and shackel quite easily despite not being reinforced. I was impressed.

After removing the swivel I tackled the stuck shackle pin. Rather try and cut through the crown which would have required two cuts to remove the shackle. I decided to see if I could just cut through the one lug of the shackle where the pin screwed into. Perhaps just cutting away enough of the lug would allow the pin to be removed:

I was careful not to cut into the anchor shank. After a few partial cuts of the shackle lug I was able to easily unscrew the shackle pin:

Which still looked pretty good but, the corrosion that held it in place was pretty tenacious so it needed to be replaced along with the swivel.  I used some  Tef-Gel on the replacement shackle threads to help insure that I will not have to cut the shackle next time I have to remove it:

With the old swivel and anchor shackle replaced I could now sleep easier when BIANKA is at anchor: