Roller furling

sighmoon

sighmoon

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In a bid to have more space below, and as we need a new genoa anyway, we've decided it's time to get a roller furling system. We were thinking of the plastimo ones, as they're the cheapest I've seen. Are they OK? Is there anything better for the price?

The boat is 27' and 4.5 tonnes (Guy thompson T27). We're planning cruising only.

Also, I'm not sure about the fitting. The current bottle screw holding up the forestay is rather long, and comes up to about the level of the guard rail. Can the furling drum fit over this, or do I need a new forestay?
 
Can not say about Plastimo but their products in general seem good value and a lot of French boats use Plastimo kit and furlers. I have fitted both Furlex and Harken the process is quite straight foreward and both came with a new forestay. In both cases I used the manufactors adjusting screw rather than a bottle screw but either do the job. My current boat has a MK1 Furlex which has just been reconditioned ( new lower and upper bearings) prior to that had completed over 40K miles including two atlantic crossings in 13 years which I regard as good value. Anything that keeps you off the foredeck in wet and windy weather has got to be worth the money.
 
You say "at the price" - Plastimo are hard to beat at the price, but for something more sophisticated Harken is excellent value, but you will pay more for the extra performance.
 
An excellent middle of the road price system is the Profurl .... like the Plastimo can be fitted to existing forestay without removing stay from mast ... all you do is slide it on from bottom once bottom bottle-screw is undone. Plastimo I believe can be fitted with stay in place.

Always amazes me that makes are recc'd - but at end of day ... availability of bits over counter, ease of fiting and DIY - along with simple set-up means more than crossing oceans etc.
 
I helped a mate fit a Plastimo furler to his Jaguar 22. We fitted it over the existing stay with the mast up.Looked like good kit to me and theres lots of them about.

The sections were quite hard to fit together so we used KY jelly on the joints(didnt ask why he had it aboard /forums/images/graemlins/blush.gif)

Personally if its a bit long in the tooth I would fit a new forestay at the same time.Once you fit the furler its out of site out of mind.
 
I have an older plastimo system, will be the equivalent to your proposed as my boat is 26ft.

I have a turnbuckle on my forestay as I have a bridle assy on the forestay. I found the last time I re-stepped the mast with the turnbuckle pretty much closed it jammed the roller solid, presumably the full weight of the forestay was being transfered to the part where the turnbuckle body was trying to enter the tube.

I fixed this by opening the turnbuckle so it was around half way on the threads and moved it down the parallel bars beneath the roller. See below>

07_TC_cruise_Southrlys_lrg.jpg
 
I have a Plastimo 810S on current boat, and had a Profurl N32(? .. maybe LC32) on the last one. The Plastimo is okay, but generally lighter construction than the Profurl. My experience with them (a bit over 10 years worth) is that the Plastimo has needed more servicing in spite of Profurl being involved in a dismasting. Profurl exstrusions are much beefier and Plastimo plastic slot sections wear out - Profurl has alloy slot so no similar problem. Either are fine, but I'd buy a Profurl if it was only 25% more than the Plastimo.

Fitting is similar for both, and both need forestay to be detached (but only at bottom). It sounds like your forestay may be a problem with the bottle screw. With the Plastimo, the angle of lead for the halyard is fairly critical, so you will probably need to drop the stick to attach extra hardward at masthead, in which case a forestay replacement is probably worthwhile anyway. (The Plastimo "Wrapstop" works well to stop halyard winding around furler, but both units need backstay to be eased to slacken forestay for furling / unfurling.)

If you go ahead, have a new genoa made for the furler, and have a foam luff installed - this healps the sail gather diameter mid luff as it furls, and helps to keep it flat - reefing a sail without a foam luff reduced overall area, but develops a 'bubble' near the luff and adds fullness resulting in a special purpose "blow me sideways" headsail.
 
We've just acquired a boat with Plastimo headsail furling and need some advice on renewing the forestay which is about 10 years old. It seems from the original assembly instructions that the furling components are screwed and sealed in place as installation proceeds and I suspect that by now the galvanic interaction between the stainless steel and aluminium components will be such that dismantling for re-assembly on a new stay would be a difficult/impossible task. Does anyone have any experience of this, and is there a work-around (e.g. thread through a new stay and have the final talurit put on in situ?)

David
 
I'm having a very similar problem. I want to convert from cutter back to sloop. According to the manual the last bit fitted is the bearing at the top so I presume I need to take it down then try disassembling. Manuals available online here
 
I've just renewed the forestay on Rowana while the mast was down over the winter.

I have a Sta-lock at the bottom and a swaged eye at the top. The difficulty I had was in removing the original Sta-lock. The 2 outer parts unscrewed OK, but the upper screwed part was well locked onto the stay and wouldn't slide up it. I ended up by borrowing a serious propane torch from one of my mates and using a large pair of pliers as a heat sink above the sta-lock, appling a large dose of heat to it. Once I'd got that apart, the rest was easy.

I then removed the old stay and measured up for a replacement. In order to make sure I got the correct length, I took it home, fixed one end via a screwdriver through the eye to the vice in my garage. The other end I pulled really tight via a tackle looped over the towbar of the car in the drive. I measured it several times to make sure I'd got the correct length.

I then ordered a new one from the Jimmy Green website, where I also purchased a new Sta-lock. When the new one came, I compared it with the old one and I was less than 1mm out.

Fitting it to the furler was easy in my case as I was renewing the Drum and first section of foil at the same time. In your case, I would make sure I tied on a messenger line as you withdraw the old stay, as you may find it a bit difficult to get the new one through the drum plastic bearing.

Once I had the new one through, I fitted the new furler parts, then made up the new Sta-lock as per the instructions. The mast went back up, and everything seems to work ok. I'm happy with the result anyway.
 
Thanks, I'm reassured. The key words are StaLok and messenger which (barring accidents) should make it fairly easy DIY job.

What is the anecdotal evidence of the robustness of the foils during this sort of work? I imagine careless handling when the tension is off could result in an expensive kink?
 
I had the mast and the foil sitting on 4 "Saw Horse" thingies I bought at B&Q. I think they were about £14 for a pair. It was quite steady for the work to be done.

BTW, the stay will not be in contact with the foil as there is a plastic insert in the foil, and the stay runs through that.

I'll send you a PM with my phone number if you want to talk it through.
 
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