Winch is stuck in freespool - 89040 Vantage 4000; Winch

Hello. It seems the winch on your Yamaha 'strained' its electrical system; 'fried' wires including the 'starter circuit' wiring. It's possible there is a 'blown' relay and/or fuse somewhere. Good luck and keep me informed; if you want to.

andrew answered this yesterday and someone deleted it. its to keep the tape from freespooling

Could be it is burned out but only dismantling and examination will discover the extent of the damage.
A self recovery winch is usually quite robust and designed to withstand a substantial overload as due to the cost, most people opt for a smaller capacity than the ideal choice.

Although the earliest two extant U.S. patents for reels described freespool clutches in the mid-1850s, and many more refined clutches were invented before 1900, the vast majority of baitcasting reels were not equipped with such clutches until after World War II. Reels with clutches were available long before that, but in most casting reels, the spool remained connected to the handle through the gear train during the cast. By 1900, inventors had come up with many different ways of breaking that connection by separating the gears, by separating the gears from the spool, etc. But most reels weren't made with what were often fairly complicated devices.
The first automatic clutches were invented in the early 1890s. These freed the spool as soon as the angler stopped cranking the reel.

if your saying that winch will take in and let out ok but wont hold a load in tension , then your winch directional valve or the winch motor is worn out and is allowing oil to pass right thru it regardless of it not being activated as skidder winches don't have a brake like electric winches do it uses the power of the oil locked into motor to hold a load ( that's also why id never stand under a load suspended by one !!!)

if you can use the winch manually by pressing buttons on the winch then the problem will be in either the remote unit(Battery in back to front) or the receiver in the winch

Is there a load switch on winch

The winch has electric solenoids to control the motor. Most of the time when these things quit working, it is either because the solenoid has failed or the wire connections to the solenoids has come loose.