In mast furling

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Alan1

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I am thinking of buying a beneteau 311 with in mast furling does anyone out there have any experience of these systems good or bad ?

Is it an extra that is worth paying more for ?

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Awful things, unless you are not interested in sailing faster than a crawl.
They can jam, the sail has an awful shape and the mast section is huge. Unless you own a 45+ footer why bother?
On a reasonable size rig like yours a good sail with a simple lazyjack arrangement and a permanent sail cover will be much safer, cheaper and faster.


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saw your other posting, another furling system is a boom furler that allows a better shape by using horiz. battens, and lowers center of weight when furled. not talking about rolling sail on boom to furl.

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No, I'm with Jules. I would take it off if I bought a boat with it fitted. Not so much because it can jam, but the sail shape cannot be as good, and I do like sails to work as well as budget will allow.

<hr width=100% size=1>my opinion is complete rubbish, probably.
 
Too much weight aloft and very unseamanlike. Terrible sail shape and prone to jam just when one needs them to work.

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I seem to be in the minority here, but Solitaire had in-mast reefing by Maxiroach. On the whole it was fairly easy to set, but I found it quite difficult to pull out on my own My partner didn't have that problem. On the other hand it did set very well, with vertical battens, but surprisingly, despite the name, had hardly any roach at all that I could see. Reefing was a dream however, and I had no problem doing that. Our new boat has in-mast as well, but we haven't had the mast up yet, so can't comment.

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If you feel a Benni 311 is the right design for you, then in-mast furling is a sensible complement to the overall sailing package.

I assume given the relative youth of the said yacht the in-mast furling is not the ugly bolt-on variety? If so ignore the earlier comment about extra windage, this does not apply to the recent designs where the sail furls into the main body of the mast.

I read through a Southern Sailing School assessment of furling systems, they were wary of fully battened stack-pack systems because the main sail cannot be de-powered in a tight manouver situation. On in-mast furling they were relatively positive which surprised me given their "old school" reputation.

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The sail shape you can get with in mast is horrible. For me that alone would be enough.

Jojo, have to take issue with one thing, that fully batterned sails can't be depowered to manouever. There are two ways that I can think of, one is to scandalise it, I.e to pull the topping lift way up and create a sort of bag at the bottom of the sail. This will remove all drive. The slightly easier way is simply to dump a couple of feet of halyard. This will destroy all drive from the sail and if you miss the buoy etc it's pretty straight forward to quickly winch up a couple of feet of sail to get some drive back.

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I consider myself as a reasonable sailor, and can set a sail, but I have to admit I never could set an "in mast" sail. I never knew whether to let out the boom or the foot. I found them particularly difficult to set correctly. Having said that, they have advantages in as much as you can reduce sail quickly.

Peter.

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We have an add-on furling system and its fine, thank you very much. Easy enough to deploy, reef and stow the main once you get the knack of it. Ours is a MaxiRoach sail which performs well, and when I took it back to MR for some minor repairs, I received excellent service and lots of useful tips. One of which was to leave the battens out altogether !

On the charter market in the Med, the large majority of Ben-Jen-Bavs have furling within the mast, not add-ons. This would be avoided if the risk of jamming is as significant as others are making out.

I suspect on the Benny you are looking at, it will be within the original mast. It all comes back to how you intend to use the boat. If a keen racer, with a number of good crew, you might prefer a traditional system. If just you and partner, day sailing and cruising, in mast furling is fine and in many ways beneficial.

<hr width=100% size=1>It's frustrating when you know all the answers, but nobody bothers to ask you the questions.
 
You don't need to de-power in-mast sails simply because they don't have much power in the first place and if Southern Sailing like them for carrying out their contrived close quarters antics it says it all, sails are best used at sea not in harbours and certainly not in marinas.

Take one cruising design of boat where performance is adequate if not sparkling, add a dash of in-mast reefing and you have now created a motorsailer for light winds and upwind. But of course you can put the sail away quickly and don't have to buy boom covers. Any boat will move at speed in strong winds, but how much better it is to have one that will also still sail in normal light to moderate conditions. We had fully battened slab reefing (main & mizzen) on our old W33 and once sailed with a free wind about F3 60 degs off the bow with an identical W33 with in-mast, there was a continuous speed difference of almost 0.75kts and we soon left them well behind, about 1.5 hrs difference on a 10hr channel crossing so we had plenty of time to put on the sail covers. Our current boat has 2 line cockpit controlled slab reefing on a fully battened main for all 3 reefs, with lazyjacks, easily done single handed and all from the safety of the cockpit, with a performance gain not loss and no risk of a jammed sail. But we do have to spend 5 minutes putting on the sail cover, this could be halved with a zip up stackpak though!





<hr width=100% size=1><font size=1>Sermons from my pulpit are with tongue firmly in cheek and come with no warranty!</font size=1>
 
There's an interesting spread of opinions across the two forums you posted this question on. Scuttlebutters seem generally to be against IMF, PBOers seem to be in favour. Can one draw conclusions of what type of sailor reads which forum first?

I expect most people read both, but go to one before the other, and hence post their reply where they find the post first.

On IMF, I can't comment though, I have never been on a boat with it on.

<hr width=100% size=1>One day, I want to be a real sailor. In the mean time I'll just keep tri-ing.
 
You are exaggerating somewhat Robin - totally out of character !!

To say "You don't need to de-power in-mast sails simply because they don't have much power in the first place" is absurd. We can sail 60degs off the wind in a F3, (but maybe that's because we have a Moody not a Westerly/forums/images/icons/wink.gif), and all other boats with in mast furling can sail up wind too. Those that can't are due to other factors or a combination, eg cats.

My view is not quite so polarised as yours. The inmast furling was attactive when we bought the boat due to SWMBO's lack of experience. Next time around I may well go for a stack-pack, or another inmast - it will depend on many other factors about the boat, not just this one.




<hr width=100% size=1>It's frustrating when you know all the answers, but nobody bothers to ask you the questions.
 
Back in the mid 1980's I bought a 30 footer with a relatively early in mast furling system for which all the negative aspects re sail shape, close wind sailing etc applied. A few years later I put on a new sail with vertical battens and some roach which brought a remarkable imrovement of speed and allowed me to sail much closer to the wind. After a winter storm in 1999 badly damaged boat and mast I fitted an in-boom furling system. It brought yet another improvement of speed and wind angle but was harder to handle. For the last 3 years I have had a 36 footer, again with in mast furling and vertical battens. For simple cruising it is fine although the battens have a tendency to jam in the groove when unfurling in relatively strong winds. It is absolutely essential to furl the sail without any folds is it if you want to avoid unfurling problems. Otherwise it's good, simple and fast. I am sailing in the mediterranean with only my wife as crew. If I went bluewater sailing or I'd buy lazyjacks and single line reefing for peace of mind but for me and my way of sailing in mast furling is fine!

<hr width=100% size=1>sailfreak
 
Back in the mid 1980's I bought a 30 footer with a relatively early in mast furling system for which all the negative aspects re sail shape, close wind sailing etc applied. A few years later I put on a new sail with vertical battens and some roach which brought a remarkable imrovement of speed and allowed me to sail much closer to the wind. After a winter storm in 1999 badly damaged boat and mast I fitted an in-boom furling system. It brought yet another improvement of speed and wind angle but was harder to handle. For the last 3 years I have had a 36 footer, again with in mast furling and vertical battens. For simple cruising it is fine although the battens have a tendency to jam in the groove when unfurling in relatively strong winds. It is absolutely essential to furl the sail without any folds is it if you want to avoid unfurling problems. Otherwise it's good, simple and fast. I am sailing in the mediterranean with only my wife as crew. If I went bluewater sailing or I'd buy lazyjacks and single line reefing for peace of mind but for me and my way of sailing in mast furling is fine!

<hr width=100% size=1>sailfreak
 
Back in the mid 1980's I bought a 30 footer with a relatively early in mast furling system for which all the negative aspects re sail shape, close wind sailing etc applied. A few years later I put on a new sail with vertical battens and some roach which brought a remarkable imrovement of speed and allowed me to sail much closer to the wind. After a winter storm in 1999 badly damaged boat and mast I fitted an in-boom furling system to the same boat. It brought yet another improvement of speed and wind angle and the boat rolled less due to less weight aloft, but the system was harder to handle. For the last 3 years I have had a 36 footer, again with in mast furling and vertical battens. For simple cruising it is fine although the battens have a tendency to jam in the mast groove when unfurling or furling in strong winds. It is absolutely essential to furl the sail without any folds is it if you want to avoid unfurling problems. Otherwise it's good, simple and fast. I like the easy and continuous reefing without predetermined steps best. I am sailing in the mediterranean with only my wife as crew. If I went bluewater sailing I'd buy lazyjacks and single line reefing for peace of mind but for me and my way of sailing in mast furling is fine!

<hr width=100% size=1>sailfreak
 
Sorry Nick, I wasn't exaggerating (as if!) and you did say on another post you don't often agree with me /forums/images/icons/smile.gif but:

I wasn't suggesting you couldn't sail at 60 degs apparent, that is about the optimum wind angle for most boats for max speed (could be a beam wind true), the comparison was between two identical W33s one with fully battened sails the other in-mast (on both masts in both cases) and in a F3 that we all like to sail in and there was a difference of almost 0.75kt boatspeed. OK if the wind were to increase to F4 plus then (on that course at least) the speed difference might almost vanish. The differences are again highlighted if the course is upwind, the in-mast rig will lose out on pointing ability in all wind strengths and the VMG directly to windward will be very different. Drive from a mainsail comes mostly from the trailing edge rather than (as on the foresail) from the leading edge. This is exactly where the sail area has been cut from an in-mast sail (the area loss is about 15% overall) and the double wammy is that the sail has to be cut flat as well to aid furling/reefing. The treble wammy is that the backstay, which ideally is tensioned to tighten the forestay and improve the genoa set (pointing ability again) will also need to be let off to keep the mast straight to aid furling/reefing.

In-mast is convenient, that is very much the upside. The downside is that you start off with a 15% reef in the mainsail area and a less efficient shape. You pays your money and takes your choice, maybe (as Ric mentioned) on a really big boat with a light crew I would consider in-mast but we currently have 12.5m and a big FB main and have no problems with just 2 of us and a proper all in the cockpit controlled reefing system. OK we now have a quick boat, but we can still sail in light winds when many around us have had to resort to engines, if I wanted a mobo I would have bought one because if you need a stiff F4/5 to get going well and don't like F6 and above your sailing is much more limited!

In-mast might be more acceptable if the mast height/boom length were increased to compensate for area lost but then the boat would have to be designed for it from scratch, different mast position maybe and more keel weight. Offered as an option on a boat designed for a normal main is like selling you a car without the 5th gear, if that trade off is acceptable then that is fine but you cannot cannot claim that the performance difference can be ignored.

Each to his own, all boats are compromises and it would be very boring if we all made the same choices.


<hr width=100% size=1><font size=1>Sermons from my pulpit are with tongue firmly in cheek and come with no warranty!</font size=1>
 
Having sailed boats with both a stac pac and in mast furling, I opted for stac pac on mine and would do so again. The sail shape is better and the sail area is more with little impact on ease of handling. Single line refing means you can do it single handed from the cockpit. No real choice for the "serious" sailor if you have any intention of beating hard to windward.

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I agree. Having chartered boats with IMF, they can be a little bit picky when trying to roll the main away and definately take some getting used to. My current boat has single line reefing with big blocks and 8mm dyneema- reducing sail area is simple and easy, even in a blow on my own. I would go for a stack pack every time- if the track is nice and slippery, the sail shoots down easily. I've just invested in a dyneema main halyard which will go on this weekend- I think that should improve things even more. I think the sail shape is definately more critical in lighter winds- it is sometimes poosible with IMF, but is more difficult to reproduce compared to conventional slab reefing main. Just my opinion.

<hr width=100% size=1>Life's too short- do it now.
 
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