Furlex, Rotostay, Profurl......???

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KenMcCulloch

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I'm thinking about a roller reefing genoa for Border Maid. I know enough about sails to make a sensible decision but the merits and limitations of different furling gears are a bit of a mystery to me. I have a 6mm forestay (fixed length, no bottlescrew) and the sail would be 6.1 m on the luff.
Wisdom welcome.
 
Impressed with Harken myself.
Crusader did the whole thing inc fitting new forestay, not cheap because I'd bought a bigger boat than I'd budgeted for!, but 7 years of no hassle. They do most makes I think.
HTH
Chris
 
I have a cheap and cheerful Plastimo 406s(?) that came with the boat.
It maybe the cheapest on the market and I think it is 10 or so years old.
Worked flawlessly last season

I am told though that Furlex is pretty good though

26ft traditional sloop

On another subject, have you resolved your vexicological dilemma yet ?
Is it to be the Euro ensign, a Scots red, or even a Union ensign ?

Cheers
 
Just fitted a Rotosay during the winter & tried it out for the first time yesterday. Seemed to work OK & a big improvement on the old system.

I was a bit limited for choice as the old system was a Colnbrook which has a large foil slot. (The old foil is in need of a good home. The drum's knackered. PM if anyone is interested). Hence the bolt rope is large. The Rotostay fitted the bolt rope whereas some of the others would have required a sail mod. I fitted the stainless system rather than the ali system hoping that there would never be any corrosion problem. Anything with ali on a boat can corrode over the years.

Although some have said the Rotostays are a pain to adjust the new designs are great. Free up the foil which is then lifted up the forestay. This is just 4 allen head screw in the case of the stainless version or unscrewing a nice far thread in the case of the ali version. Put a small spanner on the forestay & then just simply rotate the drum which is forms the bottle part of a bottle screw to get the right tension. It's locked off with a nut on the lower screw. The forestay is held with a "nylock" type system inside the drum.

One other thing that swung it for me was that Rotostay are local and could come down and do all the measurements and alos do the fitting. I was around while the guy came over and fitted it and since the mast was down, it appeared a very easy job. The only thing requiring care was cutting the forestay to length & assembling the screw on type fitting to the top of the wire.
 
I bought a Profurl last year for a Sadler 32. The Profurl comes with a 10 year guarantee and has sealed bearings and is maintenence free. The Furlex failed after 15 years. No complaints about the Profurl.
 
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Is vexicology the science or art of flag making?

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More the study of flags and national symbols I think. Massive respect to Mr Ockle for teaching me a new word, and no I have not yet resolved my dilemma in that respect. You can buy some very interesting ones though.
 
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Another vote for Profurl.

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Same here. More expensive than Plastimo, less that Rotostay and loads less than Furlex.

I didn't like the proprietary forestay on Rotostay, or the fact that the bearings take the full rig tension. Profurl was easy to assemble and uses a normal forestay.
 
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