Furlers vs hanks

[justanothersailboat]

Yes, for a pure racer sailing against other dedicated race boats it's not going to reach the same level. There may not be much of a niche between "unserious enough to not mind" and "too serious about racing to settle for this", I don't know.

 

[Chiara’s slave]

Our furler barely affects the hoist, the drum is below the deck, and the halyard is above the forestay attachment. We mayblose 30mm, the thickness of the top swivel. And for us, almost everyone we will ever race seriously against has a furler too, ie other multis.our jib was carefully measured by the sailmaker to be as full a hoist as possible given the setup, it really fills the space. And as, by mono standards, we are always short handed, often racing 2 handed, the furler is pretty essential.

 

[samfieldhouse]

That sounds really good, samfieldhouse! And your staysail - has soft shackles?

With a slightly less extreme genoa than you I don't have quite such a drastic cutoff of effectiveness but the problem is similar. Thanks for explaining how you solved this, it sounds simpler and cheaper than some approaches. Best of both worlds really!

Yes, dyneema soft shackle loops. Annoyingly they're a bit slower to hank on than sping loaded ones... maybe I need more practise!
You can of course just drop the furling sail down the foil... but I decided against that as I simply don't have space to store a 26SqM sail on a 28ft boat... let alone battle with it on the foredeck in the kind of conditions when I want to be taking it down!