Halyard Wrap

[nigel1]

Over the past four weeks I have been experiencing problems with furling the head sail due to halyard wraps.

Bit of backgound info.
When I purchased the boat in 2009, the head sail foil was fitted with a deflector, which on inspection was pretty much chewed up, so I replaced it with divertor, which I thought was in a good position to achieve a good angle between the foil and the halyard. Harken recommend an angle of beween 7 and 10 degrees, but I have seen mention of angles between 10 and 15 degree's.


On the first occasion when the wrap occured, I managed to clear it by quickly releasing the furling line and then hauling in again, and that worked.
At the first opportunity, I dropped head sail to check the upper swivel, and it appeared fine, rotated very freely, but I took the opportunity to flush the swivel with hot water.


However, subsequently, I'm still getting issues with wraps. Have tried altering the halyard tension, increasing or decreasing tension seems to have no effect.


The furling system is a Facnor SD, probably dating from the 1990's, and has been on the boat for 22 years.


Is it possible that while the swivel seems to work fine, it might be binding when under tension, or, do I need to try and increase the angle between the foil and the halyard.

I'm going to experiment by fitting a short soft shackle between the lower furler drum and the sail tack, which will raise the upper swivel and increase the halyard angle. If that works, will then switch the soft shackle to go between the head of the sail and the upper swivel.

These upper swivels are no longer available, and I'm kind of reluctant to fix the problem with a new furling system as I recently blew the boat budget with replacing the worn out teak deck with Tec Dec and fitting a bow sprit and purchasing a gennaker.


The picture shows the current angle between halyard and foil, and have attached a drawing of the upper swivel.

Any advice would be appreciated.





Facnor Swivel.pdf