Winch sizing?

[blinkerfluid]

We just bought a 39' monohull with an in-boom furling mainsail. We're not crazy about the boom furling (no electric winch) because we can't pull the sail up or down without putting lines on the cabin top winches and it takes forever.

We're considering removing the furling boom and going back to a standard slab reef system with some type of low friction track on the mast. Right now our boat only has a single reefing winch on the mast just below the boom. If we swap out the booms, I want to add halyard winches to the mast, so all the sail handling can be done at the mast.

West Marine has BOGO on lewmar winches right now, so I thought I might go ahead and order the mast winches, but I'm not sure what sizes we need. Lewmars winch selection guide says we should use 40s for halyard winches, but that seems giant. We had an Island packet 420 and I think that boat had a 16 and an 8 on the mast.

Our boat only has Harken 32s on the cabin top, so one option might be to upgrade those to 40s and repurpose the 32s for the mast. But just adding a pair of 16s to the mast would be a lot cheaper.

Any thoughts?

[S/V Illusion]

To state the obvious, The only reason it could be more difficult to raise a boom furled main compared to slab main is friction. There is something wrong you should fix rather than trash the furler. Having had bots with slab reefed mains, in-mast and boom furler, Th latter is by far the preferable choice.

[Bill O]

Agree with the above to take a look at the main track and roller before attempting to change the whole main set up. Something isn't right.

Not certain how long you've owned the boat, but always good to attempt to use all systems and try to understand the set up before deciding to go out on a whim to change them. It could save time and cost less making a good assessment.

Not going into slab vs roller reefing as that seems to be more of a personal preference.

Properly sizing winches has to do with gear and power ratios to generate the force exerted to rotate the winch. Adding more friction (more blocks, turns, etc.) increases the force needed to rotate the winch. The calculations are fairly easy to set up in a spreadsheet and most physically fit people can do up to 30 lbs of force to turn a winch. Less force (bigger winches) should be considered/sized for the all crew to be able to use them.

The Lewmar BOGO happens every year, so no need to rush out to buy them until you figured out what you need.

[Knotical]

Agree with above comments.

I have traditional setup with slab reefing but use in-boom furling on a friends boat pretty frequently and it is a nice system, I like it.

[Scubaseas]

16 for the outhaul sure. The halyard I would think 30 or 40 would be better. I have a 42' with 500ft.sq main with Lewmar 30s and consider them a bit undersized.

[Brioche]

I agree that it sounds like something isn't right and you should address that first. Sounds like a track issue of some sort, possibly caused by alignment of the roller boom. From the mast you should encounter limited resistance raising the main until it starts to get heavy -- maybe ⅔ of the way up for you.

[blinkerfluid]

Thanks for the replies everyone.

I'll do some more work trying to remove friction in the system when we get back to the boat.

I'm not sure how much I'll be able to remove though. We have a profurl system, which has a sail track that is set back about 6" from the mast. The sail has a bolt rope that goes through a prefeeder, then up the slot. The top of the added sail track is a little below the top of the mast, so that the halyard does a sort of zig-zag to go from the mast exit to the top of the added sail track. There are a lot of turns there that I can't do anything about.

[Jammer]

Originally Posted by S/V Illusion

To state the obvious, The only reason it could be more difficult to raise a boom furled main compared to slab main is friction. There is something wrong you should fix rather than trash the furler. Having had bots with slab reefed mains, in-mast and boom furler, Th latter is by far the preferable choice.

I have a 38' boat with in-boom furling.

In-boom furling does have more friction during the hoist. These are necessarily boltrope systems that do not have a mainsail track, and both the mandrel and the lead of the sail through the boom slot add friction. Ordinarily an electric halyard winch is fitted as part of the in-boom package, and used for both the hoist and the douse.

I would think you would want a 32 or 40 for the halyard winch. The sail will be only slightly easier to hoist with a mast-mounted winch than it is with a cabin-top winch, and a 32 or 40 would be about right for the cabin top without the in-boom furling.