Stuck Profurl c290 roller furling headsail

[Quadrille in JB]

We have been sailing our recently purchased Watkins 27 a lot and today the headsail would only unfurl about 30%. I tried furling and unfurling it but it only seemed to get worse. The lower hardware moves freely so the problem must be elsewhere.
This is my first experience with roller furling so any help will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks

[slowpoker]

Look aloft; something might be jamming the top swivel, try tightening the halyard tension, look to see what is preventing things to turn. Pull out sail by hand slowly on a calm day. You will find the problem.

[roverhi]

Check the halyard tension. If it's too loose, the halyard will wrap around the stay.

[Bill Seal]

If you can get the sail all the way out, pull it down and check the swivel, make sure the foil hasn't separated or such.
If you can't get the sail down, put on your big-boy pants, go aloft and check it out. (I had to do that a couple of weeks ago, with my wife calling me stupid the whole time)

[UNCIVILIZED]

The above are good tips. And you can of course look up the manual. Plus if it's still sticking. Inspect the whole unit visually, preferably with a camera with both optical & electronic magnification, mounted on a tripod. From a couple of different angles; both close to the boat/from underneath, & from a good distance away, so that you're shooting closer to parallel to the horizon.
The contrasting angles will let you see a lot more.

The reason for the camera's semi-obvious. It's so that you can share pics with; riggers, your neighbors, us, & also study them later on on a high resolution screen. And also, that way you have a visual record which you can go back to later as well.

You also should remove the jib in order to determine what's going on. Even when you get it to working properly. So that you can give the foil & the stay a good looking over. Particularly for things like loose joints, & fasteners coming adrift.

And it can't hurt to do the above, & or, go aloft to inspect things (along with the optical survey). Even after you get it working. As usually when one thing on the mast obviously needs TLC, there are 3 more which could use it as well.


PS: If you go aloft, take the camera with then as well. Especially for lots, & lots of pics of every bit of hardware up there, from multiple angles. To include the masthead when viewed from above. Achieved by holding the camera over it, at arm's length. Unless, that is, you have a primo mast climbing rig which allows you masthead access yourself. Unlike common bosun's chairs.

[Sailon1]

I had a similar problem with my head sail. Turns out the top foil was not all the way up so I tightened the halyard and The problem was resolved.

[seasick]

Halyard tension is often the cause but I question whether the sail would have unfurled more than a turn or two, were it loose. An overlap on the furling drum makes more sense to me.

[adlib2]

Originally Posted by Btimmerman49

We have been sailing our recently purchased Watkins 27 a lot and today the headsail would only unfurl about 30%. I tried furling and unfurling it but it only seemed to get worse. The lower hardware moves freely so the problem must be elsewhere.
This is my first experience with roller furling so any help will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks

I'm in the process of changing my 30 yr old Harken, its worn out. But also it kept jamming due to the Fore-stay being worn with pronounced fish hooks.

[Old Swampy]

I had a problem with my small jib not unfurling. I used it months after it arrived, and forgot the admonition that it might need a pennant from the head to the upper swivel, since the luff was about 4 feet shorter than the furler. The pennant solved the problem.

[double u]

check if lowermost profile can be moved up/pulled out of the drum; there used to be 2 setscrews on the models I know that went throught the drum into the lowest profile: if they loosened the profile could slide down & jam
here
http://www.profurl.com/images/info_p...elite42-59.pdf
piece 0918

[Quadrille in JB]

Thanks to everyone for all of the good tips. I've been cruising the northern Bahamas on a friends boat so I just got to it today. I manually unfurled the headsail and the problem was a loose halyard . I cranked the halyard tight with the sail unfurled and that solved my problem.
Thanks again