Here is what the Lewmar rep emailed to me: The first picture is the windlass opened up and the second is pointing out the gear which freezes:
Apparently it is common for it to freeze in one position or the other, hence not turn one way. The most likely culprit seemed to be the gear which has a clutch on it locking it in the selected rotation direction: this gear turns about 1/4 turn initially to lock up properly. Having the windlass fail in one direction seemed to be common and I found some references on-line and I got a nice response when I emailed Lewmar. Powering down was perfectly normal, but when I pressed the switch to power up all I heard was the click of the anchor solenoid (no motor sound at all).
My windlass stopped moving in one direction, in my case it was the pulling up direction.
