Inmast Furling tips And tricks

[amandasearle]

We have a Bavaria 44 with an inmast furling mail sail. We are new to sailing although not new to boating. We have had a bit of trouble with the furling sail in that it often goes in with creases and can jam up if we are not really careful. Of course, if the weather is good, we can be careful but at times we just need to get the sail in and it causes grief.

I know there are lovers and haters of the inmast furling. It's all we have so can't change what we have hot but I would love some tips from people who have experience with it. Like does the boom topper/vang etc need to be heightened or lowered or something to help the sail go in better? Any help would be appreciated!

[De.windhoos]

Originally Posted by amandasearle

We have a Bavaria 44 with an inmast furling mail sail. We are new to sailing although not new to boating. We have had a bit of trouble with the furling sail in that it often goes in with creases and can jam up if we are not really careful. Of course, if the weather is good, we can be careful but at times we just need to get the sail in and it causes grief.

I know there are lovers and haters of the inmast furling. It's all we have so can't change what we have hot but I would love some tips from people who have experience with it. Like does the boom topper/vang etc need to be heightened or lowered or something to help the sail go in better? Any help would be appreciated!

Normally you want your main on a port tack to reduce friction in the slot.
Depower your main by moving the traveler to the Lee side and/or release your vang and maybe slacken the main sheet a bit. Make sure your main is not luffing like crazy!
Do not turn your boat into the wind
Keep tension on the outhaul when hauling in.

[Dockhead]

Some tips from me, off the top of my head. Based on 8 years and 40 000 miles or so of experience with in-mast furling.

1. Keep the top and bottom bearings lubricated, and check the foil for straightness. Sticky bearings or kinked foil can cause all kinds of problems.

2. In-mast furling HATES baggy sails. Replace them, preferably with laminate. Really good new Dacron sails work fine, but laminate sails are even much better. Plus laminate sails never bag out, and are thinner and roll up easier. Laminate sails and in-mast furling go together like cookies and cream.

3. Experiment with different combinations of boom angle and outhaul tension until you find that combination which lets the sail roll in smoothly. If the sail is bagged out, such a combination may not exist.

4. As stated by someone above -- the sail will roll in and out better on one tack, than the other. Experiment!

5. Leaving aside forcing the sail in with a huge fold in it, the risk of jamming is almost exclusively while rolling the sail OUT. Be careful and watch it as it comes out. I usually try to scrunch up the roll first before rolling out, by cleating the outhaul and furling in. Although sometimes this works better if the outhaul is NOT cleated -- leave it loose and furl in what little bit is left, and the roll will tighten up in the process. THEN furl out with the outhaul.

6. If the sail start to bunch up and jam while you are rolling it out, obviously STOP. Then coax the sail back in to straighten out the bunch. DON'T try to pull it out with the outhaul -- that will just make it worse.

7. People talk about keeping tension on the outhaul, but don't overdo it. Actually, the sail goes in and out better sometimes with very little or even no tension on it. You need to experiment. How the wind is loading the sail has a lot of influence, too. I find that having a bit of wind in the sail usually helps a lot.

8. Don't freak out over small wrinkles and folds. Within reason, these do no harm.

9. You will never get the drive out of an in-mast furling sail, that you do out of a proper roachy fully battened main. HOWEVER, you can claw back a very big part of the lost performance with a straight luff and vertical battens. Some people have had horrible experiences with vertical battens, so YMMV, but my experience has been excellent. I think it's really important how the batten pockets are designed, and probably laminate material, which is more stable, makes a big difference.


Lastly, enjoy the advantages of in-mast furling! My next boat will probably not have in-mast furling, but I have been generally happy with the in-mast furling on my present boat. It has some very great advantages in rough ocean windy conditions -- in-mast furling mains work better and better, get flatter, as you furl them in. It is so easy to change sail area, that you always have just the right amount of sail up. No need to head up or change course to adjust sail area or even put the sail away. Lastly, when not in use, the sail is effortlessly stored in ideal conditions inside the mast, rolled up so not developing any creases, and protected from UV and dirt. Like that, they last much longer and hardly ever even need to be washed.

[daletournier]

Hi DH, although I'm not new to cruising I am still relatively new to inmast furlung.
So just to clarify, you reef your main while not turning into the wind? Electric winch or manually, im assuming there's alot of pressure on the sail?
I have also found it furls better with minimum out haul tension despite what I've read. Also halyard tension seems critical, I've got it really cranked on ,prior to this it would want to jam.
I feared jamming it at first until I did! As long a you don't keep on pulling it through it's fine, just refurl and start again.

Sent from my vivo Y35 using Cruisers Sailing Forum mobile app

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by daletournier

Hi DH, although I'm not new to cruising I am still relatively new to inmast furlung.
So just to clarify, you reef your main while not turning into the wind? Electric winch or manually, im assuming there's alot of pressure on the sail?
I have also found it furls better with minimum out haul tension despite what I've read. Also halyard tension seems critical, I've got it really cranked on ,prior to this it would want to jam.
I feared jamming it at first until I did! As long a you don't keep on pulling it through it's fine, just refurl and start again.

Correct, do NOT turn into the wind to reef or furl.

But you also do not want the sail to be fully loaded up. I ease the mainsheet to feather and depower the sail, but not quite so much that the sail flaps. Keep the vang on to control boom angle.

I use an electric winch but I have a big boat with a big mainsail. On a boat your size doing it manually is surely better -- allowing you to better feel what's going on.

Affirmative on the halyard tension. But halyard tension is usually set and forget on in-mast furling mains.

Ditto with backstay tension -- you can't use the backstay because you can't bend the mast without screwing up the furling. The foil must be straight. Backstay should be set correctly once and then be left alone.

[daletournier]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

Correct, do NOT turn into the wind to reef or furl.

But you also do not want the sail to be fully loaded up. I ease the mainsheet to feather and depower the sail, but not quite so much that the sail flaps. Keep the vang on to control boom angle.

I use an electric winch but I have a big boat with a big mainsail. On a boat your size doing it manually is surely better -- allowing you to better feel what's going on.

Affirmative on the halyard tension. But halyard tension is usually set and forget on in-mast furling mains.

Ditto with backstay tension -- you can't use the backstay because you can't bend the mast without screwing up the furling. The foil must be straight. Backstay should be set correctly once and then be left alone.

Thanks. Ive just re rigged the boat myself and now have the mast in column which was bending forward before. The halyard wasn't tight enough either, it definitely seems better now. Really haven't used it a great deal as im heading up the oz coast with strong following breezes.
May look into laminated main.
I definitely use the manual winch to wind sail out but have been using electric to furl ,until it stopped working last week.

Sent from my vivo Y35 using Cruisers Sailing Forum mobile app

[De.windhoos]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

Correct, do NOT turn into the wind to reef or furl.

But you also do not want the sail to be fully loaded up. I ease the mainsheet to feather and depower the sail, but not quite so much that the sail flaps. Keep the vang on to control boom angle.

I use an electric winch but I have a big boat with a big mainsail. On a boat your size doing it manually is surely better -- allowing you to better feel what's going on.

Affirmative on the halyard tension. But halyard tension is usually set and forget on in-mast furling mains.

Ditto with backstay tension -- you can't use the backstay because you can't bend the mast without screwing up the furling. The foil must be straight. Backstay should be set correctly once and then be left alone.

The reason for keeping a bit of outhaul tension is to have a tighter furl, therefore less change of jamming when unfurling. Also because I depower but keep wind in the main, if I just release the outhaul the sail will move away from the boom too much. Normally wrapping the outhaul once or twice on a winch will keep it tensioned enough.

Also very important trick with Selden systems that have a ratchet on the mast is to always have tension on the outhaul to prevent the line from jumping of the sheaf in ratchet thingy.
Learned that the hard way the first year. after setting a reef the sail would unfurl again, and again and again... so after a day of sweat and frustration I decided to be smart and RTFM. Problem solved

But overall very happy I choose a new furling mast after I lost the old mast. Reducing sail is easy, you always have the right amount and it makes life much easier when singlehanded.

[Markhunter1097]

Have mclube sailkoteplus applied to the sail, removes friction and gives a tighter furl

[Alita49DS]

A lot about tension and tacks but I do not think that there has been mention of the all critical boom angle. You want to keep the boom absolutely horizontal using the topping lift. Once set you can then forget.

There is some good advice on the Z Spars web site.

[sailcrazy]

When we first bought our boat, with in-mast furling, we had frequent-but not always-issues with getting the sail to come out. We replaced the old M/S-helped, but still had problems about half the time. Replaced the M/S with a tri-radial cut synthetic M/S....much better, but still the opccational problem. Then one day, putting out the main, it jambed and would not move in or out. After playing with it for some time, it did let go, started to come out, and then came down!!! Long story short-the top bearing was sticky, went bad, and finally froze....and we unscrewed the housing as we tried to get the sail out. and down it all came. Fortunately, it was a quiet day, we collected and folded the sail, and limped back into the marina in Athens. Found a rigger and rebuilt/repaired the top bearing......and not a single issue/problem in the 5 years since! Not saying your top bearing is faulty, but certainly something to check-it surely fixed our issue.

[amandasearle]

Thanks for all the helpful hints! All great advice for us to try.
The boat came with two sails. The original one was much thinner than the new one and worked better in the furling but had got baggy and finally ripped in some winds. We put the replacement in and it's definitely not really designed for this mast - in fact, the ex owner bought it from a chap called Habib in Tunisia! Am sure it was nicked off some other boat!!! The cut is different to the original sail and it's quite a lot thicker. We have had to really tighten the halyard as the sail almost seems too long for the mast and had a kink which really caused issues as you can imagine!
I suspect that the actual sail is part of the issue but was interested to read about the vang and boom positions and will give those a try.
I think we are going to have to end up getting a new sail by the sounds of it.

[quandary]

I have Selden hydraulic inmast furling. Some scary moments when running with suddenly increasing wind. Pressure on the main is too much for the furling to cope with so there are two basic options as I see it: turn into wind a bit which is not good because apparent wind gets even stronger and makes furling more difficult as excessive flogging or load on the sail both inhibit furling,
or,
hauling the boom midships to unload the sail on a dead downwind run and then furling.
I'd be interested to hear from experience.
The furling works perfectly under normal conditions but I get nervous when hit by sudden increases in wind speed that demand expeditious reefing.
Its all very well to say that one should watch what is going on and reef early but the reality is that one does get caught occasionally in some sphincter tightening situations!

[amandasearle]

Yes, I agree. It's easy when you have the time and not too much wind but every time we need to do it in a hurry, it's a bloody disaster

[De.windhoos]

Originally Posted by quandary

I have Selden hydraulic inmast furling. Some scary moments when running with suddenly increasing wind. Pressure on the main is too much for the furling to cope with so there are two basic options as I see it: turn into wind a bit which is not good because apparent wind gets even stronger and makes furling more difficult as excessive flogging or load on the sail both inhibit furling,
or,
hauling the boom midships to unload the sail on a dead downwind run and then furling.
I'd be interested to hear from experience.
The furling works perfectly under normal conditions but I get nervous when hit by sudden increases in wind speed that demand expeditious reefing.
Its all very well to say that one should watch what is going on and reef early but the reality is that one does get caught occasionally in some sphincter tightening situations!

Why can't you depower on other points of wind? Use your traveler or vang in combination with the main sheet. How do you normally depower in a gust or broach?

[Akapeterc]

I always use the outfurler line to push the sail out and keep tightening up with the outhaul line. If pulling out with the outhaul line it will jam on me