Roller Furling

[RobertB]

Is there difficulty tacking a large sail (e.g., a 150 Genoa) with multiple fore sails? Don't multiple furlers/forestays interfere with the sail travel one side to the other?

[Highlander]

Nope I just furl the Genny enough for it too pass over the Jib furler & with the 2 Harken 0 & storm sail Furlers all on Torlon Ball bearing thats a real breeze , the drifter is on a Profurl top down spinnaker furler
no they do not interfere with the sail travel
J

[tvanbeck]

All,
Thank you for the advice to put the roller furling on. Tried it out this weekend and it was great. Had a little trouble getting the mast up but that was because it was the first time.

Looking forward to a great sailing season.

[Catigale]

At one point I had a perfect length bungie that stopped the CDI fuller from flopping and then nicely lifted it off deck when I moved the mast to the step. Now the kids help so I lost that skill.

I'll refund it when they leave for college this fall...

I'm actually going to hank on for Cuttyhunk this year since I've found the Genny overpowered on the Cape a lot.

[K9Kampers]

Hank on? Shirley, you jest!

[NavySailor]

Funny - I was going to start a new topic, but then I saw this one and decided to jump on. My M25 currently has a roller furler. I trailer my boat to the ramp and then home every time I use it. I find that mounting and dis-mounting that thing every time is a real pain in the butt. Everybody here seems to think to keep the roller furler .... hmmmm ..... Probably doesn't help that my set-up isn't 100% right either. Can any of you old Salts tell me how to fix this? Do I need to order a new forestay? When I mount it I have to lean down as much as I possibly can so that someone can pin the thing in place.

[RobertB]

Oh, there appears to be more than one really cr__py roller furler out there. The turnbuckle you show while kind of functional is not right. Most reputable roller furlers incorporate the turnbuckle inside the furler setup. If this one cannot, and I do not think it can, I would recommend what I did after much deliberation and experimenting with various setups. Get a new furler (CDI FF2 or a Schaefer Snapfurl), a new forestay, and a Johnson/Highfield lever below the furler. You may need to move the attachment point on the mast but as you now have the turnbuckle under the furler, you may luck out and be able to have a new rig made the same total length.
Big thing to work on is a connection between the furler and the deck mount that does not rotate - at all. This will make feeding a roller furler better (e.g., the CDI has an opening that cannot accommodate twisting back and forth).

[vizwhiz]

How did you accomplish the "no twisting" Robert? I could definitley use that as helpful advice since the johnson lever adds more links that are "loose".

[RobertB]

The rigger originally added two short links between the lever and the furler, allowed the whole setup to twist about 30 degrees. I removed the links, bent the top of the lever to fit inside the shackle at the bottom of the furler, and added enough SS washers (3) to completely fill the space remaining. The connection is now rigid in twisting. This resulted in a 1 inch shorter forestay but since I had just dropped my mast and ripped out the baseplate, it was a good time to cut off the damaged 1 inch of the mast. And move the side stay adjusters 1 inch and all done.

[walt]

Im in the process of installing a Schaefer Snapfurl 500 / Hyde 110 Genoa on my 26S. I tried a little experiment with a "pinning stick" that seems to work fine - makes pinnng with a lot of tension relitively simple. Pictures of my install in the link below. Im doing this now in Lake Havasu Az.. yesterday it got up over 117F.. Perfect weather for working outside on the boat lol..

http://analogengineering.com/sail/mac/p ... stick.html

[RobertB]

The reason I did not go to the SnapFurl CF-500, even though it very highly rated, is that it the one I was looking at requires a smaller diameter boltrope on the foresail than standard Mac sails are made with. If you are having the sail made or modified, make sure the correct size is incorporated.

Nice design with the pinning lever. Make some up and sell them on the site.

[walt]

I went from hank on to both a new furler and jib (from Judy / Hyde) so just had the jib made to match the smaller bolt rope. You also have the hassle of adding some sort of hardware for the external halyard. I wont get to use the sail until this fall (Challenge Hi Modulus 6.53 Dacron) but everything sure looks good in the driveway.

Really DUMB thing I did yesterday at Lake Havasu in the link below lol..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaAhNX5HMMA