Installation of furler
In summer 2000, the copilot started pushing (more) heavily on the added convenience of a roller furling headsail. The benefits: easier to collect the sail when approaching harbor, and eventually easier to reduce the sail area if the wind should pick up (and vice versa).
A quick study indicated several possibilities. Being a techno freak, I opted for a Harken Mk II Unit 0 furler available at my sail maker.
In the fall, I took the one season old genua 2, still with the regular hanks, to the sail maker. He removed the hanks and added the luff tape needed to hoist the sail onto the furler profile. At the same, he converted my older st-jib into luff tape version, too.
I also took the forestay wire to him. He had a rig shop press the furler end fitting onto the lower part of the stay, after shortening the wire by an exact number of inches /cm's. Before pressing the end fitting on, the rig shop inserted the foil profile connector pieces onto the wire. (In hindsight, it might have been smarter to keep the old forestay as a spare and have an all-new stay wire for the furler).
So in the spring I got the sails, the forestay wire assembly, and the Harken package with instruction book.
Putting together the foils and the rest of the assembly was straightforward: the Harken instruction manual is very good and detailed. I had to cut the uppermost segment of the foil profile to a measure, and everything else went in place without much ado. You need to be careful, though: follow the instruction book.
I chose to mount the furler drum under deck into the anchor box, to keep the pretty profile of Senorita intact, and to keep the lower skirt of the sail close to the deck. A hole, appr. 20 cm in diameter, was sawn into the two halves of the anchor box lid, and the exposed balsa core was sealed with epoxy. Some kind of a collar would be nice around the hole if you can make or find one.
The lower end of the furler goes straight into the attachment for the forestay, inside the anchor box. The upper end of the furler goes into the mast fitting, but a 5cm extension piece was made from a couple of toggles so that the furler profile would rotate freely, without touching the mast.
A halyard guide roller is needed at the mast: it takes the halyard some 25 cm down from the halyard exit point at the mast, giving a bit more angle between the halyard and furler, and thus prevents the halyard from wrapping around the furler profile. Harken had a piece that was attached to the mast with four ss rivets.
The first summer of use indicated that an additional guide is also needed to move the spinnaker halyard a little bit forward from the exit point at the mast, so as to prevent it from wrapping around the furler. A gadget for H-boat fits the need and was attached to the mast with ss rivets.
The reefing rope is led under the deck from the furler drum to forward end of the anchor box, around a 75 mm diam block, and backwards along the port side of the boat. The rope comes above deck through a double sheave feed-through, right behind the port side front leg of the pulpit, between the deck rail profile and the anchor box lid. From there, it is taken with small guiding blocks at the stanchions to the back of the boat.
The path of the reefing rope is not as straight as when the drum is above the deck. This is the price of the 'cosmetic benefits' when mounting the drum below deck. If you use large good quality blocks, it should not present a problems, however.
A triangular piece of boat veneer was placed as separation wall in the anchor box, preventing the anchor and ropes messing with the furler drum. It also supports the anchor box lid halves when you step onto them; the hole cut for the furler otherwise weakens the lid halves too much.
Two summers of sailing have confirmed that a furler is a very nice addition to cruising type of sailing. Collecting the sail when approaching the harbor is easy, and reefing the genua #2 into jib size is easy when underway. From sailing performance point of view, the furling genua (about size of genua #2, cut to max luff length) is as good as the 'old' genua.
A worthwhile exercise, I would say. Add self-tailing winches to it, and you have made your sailing life a lot more pleasant, without loosing any on the performance. Actually, I am blaming myself for not having done this earlier..
