Furlers vs Hank on for long range liveaboard cruisers

[patprice]

Have a walk around a few marinas and count the number of yachts with bare forestays and without a furler.
You will not need two hands.
reminds me of an incident in about 1975 in Papua New Guinea near Rabaul. 2 am of course. squall, plenty of wind, 130 genoa hanked on. Onto the foredeck, changed sails with cloth flying all over the place, both genoa and jib. Tied the genoa to the rails. At the mast hoiked up the jib. Returned to the cockpit, sheeted in the sail. And.....I had rehanked the genoa!!!
Just love furlers! 2 of them, a cutter.

[Capt Gill]

Originally Posted by Jim Cate

No, Don, that was on Insatiable I, about 25 years ago. It was a superior furler, but we lost it when we were dismasted in 1996. It lies in around 10,000 feet in the waters of the southern Coral sea if anyone wants to mount a salvage mission!

Jim

I have a Reef Rite 280 in boom furling that came with boat, it takes a little practice to get the furling right, however for single/short handed sailing I wouldn't want anything else. Unfortunately they no longer make them, my guess is they sold the rights. In any case, if their headsail furling has the same quality I wouldn't hesitate to recommend them. I can attest to their customer service; I contacted them re. some questions I had for the boom furler, although it was out of production for over a decade they were v. helpful.

[knockabout]

steer it closer to the wind and reef the headsail by a third taking care to lock up your furling line and sheet , pull her back onto the wind / if it seems hard to furl they are usually designed to reef / we cheated with ours put a furling swivel at the top end of the forestay and a ronstan cruising boat furler on the bottom end / fitted the halyard block to the lower part of the top swivel and use hank on head sails / works fine will reef or furl quickly if needed /

[Dougtiff]

You should be able to roll up the sail without using a winch, or if you do use a winch, you should be able to do the job, without much load on the furling drum, there is something wrong if it does not roll up easily, Furlers are not designed to use high line loads [maybe except Hugh mega yachts, which I know nothing about], assuming you have sea room, run off, blanketing the head sail, this reduces the load and will make reefing easier, then come back on coarse, this technique is also used to change a hanked on sail, one of the stupidest ideas I have read many times, is to head up into the wind to reef, really !, your at sea, running, the wind and seas are picking up and you are going to head up, incurring green water over the fore deck, along with more apparent wind, I can always tell if the writer has any sea time, by using this technique.

[fursoc]

Great stuff everyone. Thanks!

Does anyone have an opinion on this sort of setup?

Free standing forestay (for hank on if/when required), top-down furler slightly aft for any headsail (code 0, screecher, genoa). Can these top-down furlers reef?
Inner forestay for hank on storm jib or staysail.

Basically, something similar to what this guy did - https://www.garyfelton.com/shanti/the-photos-are-in/

[The Fox]

Hi Jim, The only trouble I have had with a roller furler was that I allowed the spinnaker halyard to get slack ( when not in use the spinnaker halyard is hanked on to the pulpit just ahead of the forestay). It exited the mast just above the forestay top attachment and during a blow when trying to furl the jib it got caught up in the top bearing of the furler. It all got quite messy at a bad time and needed a climb up the mast to clear it. Check that there is nothing up there that could be fouling the top bearing.

[AKA-None]

Just remember that rolling up a foresail on a furler takes more line than it does under light wind. First time I had to roll up the jib in anger I pulled all the line out and still had sail up.

[daletournier]

Imo the most dangerous thing you can do on passages is leave the cockpit. Falling overboard often means death. This is the number one advantage of a furler, you don't leave the cockpit.

The time I least want to be on deck to reduce sail is at night when conditions are deteriorating, Good, well maintained systems, operated well should enable you to never go on deck.

[TJ D]

I'm in the hank-on staysail/furling genoa camp, and that's really just because I'd rather do a conventional sail change when going from the staysail to storm jib rather than trying to feed the sail into a luff groove.



I surely wouldn't EVER go shorthanded offshore again with a hank-on Genoa. Those wild rides on the foredeck while changing sails royally suck, and it can be pretty dangerous up there too.



I'd say to get your furler straightened out and stick with it. Your life will be a lot better out there.

[Jim Cate]

Originally Posted by old frog

Jim; You are the 1st person I have come across that has first hand experience with the Reef Rite system.

To my way of thinking, the system has tremendous upside providing the advantages of a roller furling system with the added benefit of enabling (short handed) sail changes without the problems/hazards of a free flying luff posed by most of the furling systems.

But, the skeptical part of me questions why, if it is so good, have not other manufactures developed & marketed similar systems.

Could you elaborate on you opinions & experiences of the Reef Rite system? Did you do any/many sail changes with it? How easy/hard were the changes? Etc.

Thanks.

OF, do remember that my experience was many years ago. Bob Graham, the chap who designed and built the RR furlers, was a prolific inventor/innovator, and he was constantly improving his products, so they changed over time.

The good things that I remember about our RR are:

Extremely robust construction, especially in the foil sections and the connectors between sections. Heavier than most, but really indestructible.

He used standard automotive bearings and seals, universally available and inexpensive to buy. He used a stack of three seals for redundancy, and that lead to more unloaded friction than the open Torlon ball type bearings, but under load it was fine.

The foil had the loading slot a ways up from the drum. He supplied "Kiwi Slides" which were small plastic slugs that fit the foil groove and which had fabric tabs that you sewed to the luff of t he sail, sorta like hanks. They were very low friction compared to a luff tape, and the foil below the gate acted as a storage place for them. Thus, when you dropped the sail, the slides descended into the lower part of the foil and remained attached, again like hanked on sails. One could then stick the slides from a second sail into the groove above the gate, like a storm jib, without having to deal with the old sail. Actually worked pretty well IME, solving one of the furler's shortcomings.

The furling drum had a pawl and stop setup, sorta like a winch, and a small cable that lead back to the cockpit to release the pawl when you wanted to unroll the sail. This meant that if you were sailing reefed, the pawl absorbed the torque from the sail trying to unroll instead of the furling line, so no chance of accidentally deploying the full sail. Worked just as advertised.

The disadvantages: more weight aloft and cost... they were always pricey compared to the competiton. IMO, everything else was superior to the rest.

Bob was a very nice and helpful person, and clever indeed. I don't know if he is still with us, but I do believe that he retired some years ago, and I don't know anything about the company or the products these days.

Jim

[Snowpetrel]

Id look at the furler. Sounds much worse than it should be.

For me a furler is definately the way to go if you are living aboard. Space is precious, and filling the boat up with a bunch of wet sails is not efficient.

[lateral]

Run off, blanket with main, furls with little strain as it should.

[Pete7]

Originally Posted by captmikem

If it is flat calm, yes.

But heading downwind, either hank on or furler in any wind is much easier on you, the boat and the gear.

Say you have 25 kts of wind, heading into the wind (unless you want to crank up the engine) is going to stop you, then you have no control over the boat, powering up or close hauled, your apparent wind is now 30, you are crashing into a head sea, fordeck is bouncing around like crazy, jib is flogging itself to death.
Head down wind, everything calms down, apparent wind is now less than 20, jib is covered by the main, foredeck is stable, no banging and crashing. MUCH easier. Downwind is the better way. M

Nah, on a decent sized masthead yacht the Genoa is so big that sailing downwind in a blow you just can't grip the sail cloth to pull it down because its full of wind. By heading up wind yes it's bouncy but the sail luffs and is much easier to control and bring down quickly so you get the crew off the foredeck and the hatch closed and tabbed down again.

Any blood lost on the deck by the foredeck crew is normally washed away quite quickly.

[old frog]

Originally Posted by Jim Cate

...
Bob was a very nice and helpful person, and clever indeed. I don't know if he is still with us, but I do believe that he retired some years ago, and I don't know anything about the company or the products these days.

Jim

Jim; Thanks. Their web site indicates the system basics have remained the same.

How did the system work for underway sail changes? Did it actually enable safer head sail changes or is it in the category of a neat idea in concept, but not in function?

[Suijin]

I have both on my boat, a true cutter. Roller fueling genoa and hank on inner forestay.

I can furl my genoa by hand (no winch) in 40 knots if I bear away. When I bought the boat the previous owner had a 135 (probably closer to 150 for most boats given how far back my mast is) and it was a bear to handle in many fronts. Put on a 110, which is what the rig was designed for, and the change was dramatic. Easier to furl, better shape when reefed, and sails better to. So consider your sail choice carefully.

I have a Schaefer furler and it is beefy as hell. Very happy with it.

I agree that if you are long term long distance cruising a furler is the obvious and safe choice. Your watches will be short handed and reefing in or down for squalls in the trades is trivial and as a result leads to better decisions, less fatigue, and safer journeys.