Double Luff Grooves

wklein

wklein

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Why is it that just about every headsail roller furler currently produced has twin luff grooves and slab reefing mainsails only have one?

How many people have honestly ever used second luff groove on a headsail? Wouldn't it be much more useful to put a second luff groove on masts for the trysail as they do on in mast systems? Am i missing something here?
 
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Mine has 2 groves. Allows the 'racers' to easily change sails and when not racing use a sail suitable for furling. I also suspect that it does not cost any more to produce the foil with 2 groves.
 
Boathook said:
Mine has 2 groves. Allows the 'racers' to easily change sails and when not racing use a sail suitable for furling. I also suspect that it does not cost any more to produce the foil with 2 groves.
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I suppose if your using it as a foil rather than a furler that would work but if you want to furl then it wouldn't. I was asking why masts didn't really rather than furlers did
 
Think of the extra slot as extra rigidity as per an I beam ( yeah right).

Now if you ever decide to tradewind sail, you can set two headsails wing and wing and reef em simultaneously. Pretty good eh?
 
Blueboatman said:
Think of the extra slot as extra rigidity as per an I beam ( yeah right).

Now if you ever decide to tradewind sail, you can set two headsails wing and wing and reef em simultaneously. Pretty good eh?
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I suppose but you can do that with a removable inner forestay and use it as a backup and for storm jib. And no boat i can think of is set up with double poles as standard.

I suppose its prob like camera pixels its a plus point when comparing it to a competitor. More the lack of a trysail track i was wondering surely would get far more use than with headsail.
 
I'd think most people a lot more likely to use twin headsails - or want to do snappy headsail changes - than use trysails.

Not difficult to fit a track, or just eyes, for a trysail.
 
Seajet said:
I'd think most people a lot more likely to use twin headsails - or want to do snappy headsail changes - than use trysails.

Not difficult to fit a track, or just eyes, for a trysail.
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How do you do that? you have to drop the sail in order to get to the halyard carrier. Unless your not using the halyard carrier in which case you can't furl it.
 
I have twin grooves on a 26 foot inshore cruiser. God knows why it has two grooves, not like I'm going to cross any oceans the Irish sea is enough.
 
wklein said:
How do you do that? you have to drop the sail in order to get to the halyard carrier. Unless your not using the halyard carrier in which case you can't furl it.
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I was thinking of using the twin grooves as a twin foil, as racing boats do; forget any furling or carrier, one sail going up, ideally behind the other which is coming down.
 
I was offered 1 or 2 grooves when I ordered my furler. No possibility of doing anything with twin sails on my boat as the tack is 6 ft above the deck and moves around. I opted for a single groove as I felt one 8mm groove would be less likely to let the sail pull out than one of a pair of 5 mm grooves.
 
tom_sail said:
using a spinnaker halyard?
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well you could if only one foresail halliard, but a spin halliard will be above the forestay; Ok for shortish trips.

Awkward too if the spin halliard is the 'up' one and you want to set the kite !

I was really thinking of club racers which will hopefully be set up with halliards to suit, but for a jolly the spin' would do.
 
I used to use the twin slots when racing.
The furler swivel would be below the luff rope feeder and the drum would be removed.
I had a full set of racing jibs and genoas, plus a furling/reefing sail for cruising.
Harken system. Quite expensive but worth it IMHO, for a dual purpose boat where you race with a big crew or cruise two up.
 
wklein said:
I suppose if your using it as a foil rather than a furler that would work but if you want to furl then it wouldn't. I was asking why masts didn't really rather than furlers did
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Amel use double groove foils and, for downwind sailing, pole out two genoas. If there is too much wind just roll the two away at the same time (electric motor furling).
 
The OPs point about trysails is a goodun .

ESP for a cruising boat with trysail and spare main, save a lot of hassle at the only slight expense of marginally differing performance between tacks?
 
Most Tri Sails that I have used were fitted above the stowed mainsail on the existing mast grove. The mast gate on some of the boats was above the top slider of the stowed main and on others you had to take a few sliders out before you could fit the Tri Sail. Rigging a Tri Sail is not harder than putting in the 3rd reef from the mast. Of course having a Tri Sail hanked on ready to use on a separate luff groove would be convenient but not really needed in my opinion.
 
Sailed a boat that had a short trysail track that lead into the mainsail track via 'points' above the head of the handed main. Never used the system though. In fact never ever sailed with a trysail except for 5 minutes motoring past the Squadron before a Fastnet, to show the race officer that there was one aboard and it could be set.
 
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