Roller furling - the work of the Devil?

[Lucky Duck]

In the 1970-80's it was common to have a reef row of cringles in headsails;frankly too much of a pain to bother with compared to depowering or changing sails, BUT that's talking about well crewed, relatively small ( say around or under 30' ) boats.

Still an option however, and with a downhaul on the headsail peak, so that the sail can be removed or part lowered even if under load, one is a long way towards the benefits of roller gear, without baggy sails and an ulcer / toolkit !

If the tack downhaul was lead back to the cockpit I still suspect it would still require a trip to the foredeck in order to secure the now surplus sail and/or to attach jib sheets to the alternative clew position. Easier the changing sails but a fair bit short of just pulling on a bit of string.

Thinking about things a bit 95% of the time the I sail under full jib so mainly the roller reefing system is used as a furler.

 

[Deleted member 36384]

.... reef row of cringles in headsails;frankly too much of a pain to bother with compared to depowering or changing sails ....

Its very fast and easy. Run the windward sheet onto the new clew and double up with the working sheet. Ease the sheet, lower the halyard, fasten the new tack, hoist and sheet in on the new sheet. If its a reefing jib its likely to have a tack tackle so hoisting is even easier as all the effort is done at deck level.

Finish off by rolling up the foot and running the old working sheet round to windward. I have sailed a 41 foot yacht with this arrangement and its easily a one man job.

 

[stav]

The weekend showed how both is best:

Saturday went for a sail just me with an E F3 left the harbour with a 36'ish dufour. It motored past me whilst I set up the detachable stay and set the light No1, by the time I was sailing he was 1/3 mile in front of me when he unrolled the genoa and hoisted the main.But after 3 miles I had caught up. The joy of a large light no1 and a little effort.

Sunday went for the same sail with family on board and simply unrolled the genoa and sailed nicely but probably 0.5 to 0.7knt less but lots simpler (not easier the roller has hardly been used over the winter and needs some grease). Then when coming back the wind freshened slightly and I was able to quickly and simply roller the genoa to stop us leaning over so the board game could continue below and motored the last mile home.

So my thoughts would be to have both, would add to the cost of a new boat thought and the sails do make downstairs a bit damp, but I keep the lazarette for wet sails.

 

[jordanbasset]

This is what is great about sailing, different people want different things. For us an extra half knot of speed is not important, in fact we often put up less sail than we could just to make everything a little easier. So we get there an hour or so later, it is not an issue for us. But I can understand how others want to get the optimum performance out of their boat.

 

[bbg]

Its very fast and easy. Run the windward sheet onto the new clew and double up with the working sheet. Ease the sheet, lower the halyard, fasten the new tack, hoist and sheet in on the new sheet. If its a reefing jib its likely to have a tack tackle so hoisting is even easier as all the effort is done at deck level.

Finish off by rolling up the foot and running the old working sheet round to windward. I have sailed a 41 foot yacht with this arrangement and its easily a one man job.

There's another way to do it without undoing the existing sheet knots - attach a temporary sheet to the current clew. Feed it back through the same sheet block and to another winch, so it takes the load.

Then unreave the main sheets, lead the tails up through the second clew cringle and re-reave them. When you drop the halyard you just take the load on the main sheet (which will pull the lower clew up to the upper clew cringle).

For the tack, instead of going onto the foredeck, run a line from the ring on the deck up through the cringle, back down to a ring or small block, then back to the cockpit and a cam cleat. You can reef the tack from the cockpit.

 

[snowleopard]

What problems are possible on a Roller system via a foil? This thread identifies just two. A riding turn on the drum, and a halyard wrap. What is a halyard wrap please, and how can it happen or be prevented?

Halliard wrap occurs when the top swivel fails to rotate correctly and instead of remaining on the aft side of the stay the halliard wraps around the top of the sail. The standard remedy is to lead the halliard from the mast so it meets the stay at around 30° rather than coming down parallel to the stay.

That offset can itself cause problems as it puts a sideways load on the stay at the point where it exits from the top of the foil causing a risk of fatigue failure. I know, I've had one go at that point.

Other possible causes for failure:

One cautious skipper I sailed with always kept at least 2 turns of reef on in case the luff rope pulled out of the foil. The same skipper in his safety briefing described the furling line as the most dangerous rope on the boat because if it was let go in heavy weather you'd suddenly have all your genoa out and no immediate way of getting it back in again.

My last headsail foil had its sections glued together with Loctite. I had to tap in grub screws because the sections kept separating.

 

[snowleopard]

How about another option:

I've just fitted it, but until I launch the boat in a few weeks, I don't know how well it works.

Regarding an "accident waiting to happen" why? Is that following the comments in the seaside rescue thread?

If so, here's my take on the whole idea. Mine is just a simple roller furling system from Barton. there is no rigid foil between the drum and the top swivel.

So this seems to me the best of both worlds. When all is working, you have a roller furling genoa so you don't need to go to the foredeck to hank the sail on and raise it.

But, if something goes wrong, and you can't furl it for some reason, a trip to the mast to drop the genoa halyard will have the sail down. No rigid "foil" to prevent any possibility of lowering the sail, so no harder to drop than a conventional hanked on genoa.

At least that's my theory, tell me if I have missed something.

I currently don't have roller reefing on my jib because of problems peculiar to my peculiar rig. When I took off the stay and foil I initially replaced it with roller-furling and the sail set flying. This turned out to be a total failure because, even with a hi-tech luff rope, the torque of the furling drum was not transmitted up the luff so the bottom of the sail furled tightly but the top half only loosely. in winds above 10 knots the whole upper half unfurled itself and tried to flog itself to death. Getting it down on deck with a couple of pounds of top swivel flying around is not an experience to repeat.

I have used the system on dinghies with great success but it's a nightmare on an offshore boat.

 

[prv]

When I took off the stay and foil I initially replaced it with roller-furling and the sail set flying. This turned out to be a total failure because, even with a hi-tech luff rope, the torque of the furling drum was not transmitted up the luff so the bottom of the sail furled tightly but the top half only loosely. in winds above 10 knots the whole upper half unfurled itself and tried to flog itself to death. Getting it down on deck with a couple of pounds of top swivel flying around is not an experience to repeat.

I have used the system on dinghies with great success but it's a nightmare on an offshore boat.

Seems to work fine on my jib, using wire in the luff rather than "hi-tech rope". Now ok, my boat's fairly small, but there are plenty (relatively speaking) of big gaffers with exactly the same system scaled up. I wonder if there was something wrong (ie, not correct for this approach) with your sail?

Pete

 

[doug748]

.....

Is it when the roller bearing "egg" that hoists the sail jams on the foil so that when the foil is rotated to pull out the sail it takes the halyard with it. If this is so it sounds catastrophic and impossible to correct without climbing the mast......

Walking round the hard-standing where masts are stored I noticed that three of the gears had their forestay untwisted at the top so much that it looked like a bird cage. I wonder what caused that.

On your first point:
I have had a number of forestay wraps on my set up, caused by a spinnaker halyard becoming intimate with the top swivel, very annoying. I have always managed to sort them out in daylight, without climbing the mast, but it did cost me a finish in a cross channel race once, at night. Not a classic wrap in the sense that the halyard did not become entangled, this problem is often solved by improving the lead.

and on the second:
A rigger told me that failure at the top swage was common because that is where the flexing forestay terminated, hence maximum stress/strain. He reckoned that the habit of freeing backstay tension right off, when moored, was a big factor in the problem.

 

[Deleted member 36384]

.... A rigger told me that failure at the top swage was common because that is where the flexing forestay terminated, hence maximum stress/strain. He reckoned that the habit of freeing backstay tension right off, when moored, was a big factor in the problem.

That's an interesting point. I read on here about a yacht that was left on her mooring with the stays slackened off. Apparently it suffered a few premature rigging failures. The root cause was the additional strain caused by the rigging being loose and resulting in more free play at rest. I guess the waves and wind continually cause the motion.

 

[Lakesailor]

The Hunter will get a Wickham-Martin gear when I can afford it.

Get Barton furling gear now. £60 for bottom drum and top swivel.
I love it.

Click forward to 3mins 50 secs on this vid

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[jordanbasset]

Get Barton furling gear now. £60 for bottom drum and top swivel.
I love it.

Click forward to 3mins 50 secs on this vid

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Nicely done

 

[prv]

Get Barton furling gear now. £60 for bottom drum and top swivel.

Presumably requires a suitably-constructed sail, though? I know my jib (designed for W-M furling) has a stiff wire luff with the big eyes either end firmly stitched to the sail to make sure the torque gets transferred.

Pete