Facnor Headsail Furlers

[44'cruisingcat]

Wondering if anyone can offer their opinions (based on experience) about this gear.

[Joli]

Good kit.
Not Cheap.
From experience.

[MidLandOne]

Is good stuff. But -

The normal cruising product is the SD range which is fine apart from the halyard swivel which is like most other makes quite lightly built. They also do a much more expensive LS/LX/RX version furler which is much heavier and a good choice if you can spring to that financially.

However, I am not sure if this is still the case as Facnor have changed their foil sections a bit in the last few years (so you will need to check if planning on doing the following) but the halyard swivel from the heavy range fitted onto the foil of the normal SD range and I would recommend making that choice if possible if you sail alot, especially in heavy conditions or long term cruising - the heavy swivel has a "X" at the end of the product prefix code.

You will find that the heavy halyard swivel is heavy in price but is the choice I would make (from my own experience using both the LS/LX/RX and the SD swivels) . It is also heavy in weight, being at least several times the weight of the normal SD one.

[44'cruisingcat]

Thanks for the quick responses and helpful info guys.

[Joli]

Thought pretty hard about adding a Facnor 7000 assy roller for the boat but $5k for and 8 pound furler was just too much. It is a very nice unit but at $600 per pound is too hard to swallow. Add the torque cable at $17 per foot (we need 100 foot) and we decided to stick with the ATN.

Very nice stuff, very well made, all of it I've used has worked well, but it is very expensive.

[MidLandOne]

The 7000 is a gennaker line furler built for over 2,500 sq ft of sail area though? The headsail furlers are much cheaper.

[44'cruisingcat]

Bob Oram is currently assembling 9 rigs for people building his boats, and has been able to negotiate some very good deals on all sorts of gear, much of it around 1/2 the price i would have had to pay. He's gotten pricing on ithe Facnor gear which is similar to Furlex prices (one of the guys had Furlex on his last boat and would prefer not using them again).

For my boat the LS 290 looks like the right one. It's very reassuring that there doesn't seem to be negative feedback apart from the pricing.

[Joli]

Sounds like the designer's put together a nice package for you guys. That great! Building that many rigs he should be able negotiate good pricing on all the components. I like all the Facnor stuff, the continous line furlers are slick.

The furler I showed was the ASYM FX 7000 for assy kites. Our assy kite is about 3200 sq ft, never measured it though. We don't bother with the sym kites as most of our sailing is short handed and we are able to pull the breeze easily. We don't mind spending money on the boat (just replaced a jib for $13k) but the thought of spending $600/pound for a bit of kit, regardless of how well it is engineered, just doesn't set well with me.

[MidLandOne]

Originally Posted by 44'cruisingcat

For my boat the LS 290 looks like the right one. It's very reassuring that there doesn't seem to be negative feedback apart from the pricing.

Further to my last post -

Although I am pretty sure that the LS series furler uses the same halyard swivel as the LX series it is something I would for myself double check on and if not I would get them to supply the LX swivel on the LS system (they use the same foil). I am familiar with the X series swivels which I use myself and they are vastly superior to and more reliable than the lighter construction cheaper ones if one is doing anything more than casual and tame weather sailing.

[44'cruisingcat]

Maybe dollars per pound isn't the best way of judging the gear though. It often costs more to make stuff weigh less. Carbon fibre costs way more per pound than cement.... (Oops you posted just before me, M1, this post was related to Joli's)