Roller Furler for hanked on sails

[yachtie]

I remember seeing an ad for a roller furling set up that allowed one to use hanked on sails. Does anyone have contact info for this?

[John B]

Mine has sail slugs and you load it down ( in a luff groove)and hoist it like a hanked sail, Is that what you mean?
Its a reefrite if it is.

[davidagage]

Something like this? found in the Davey Catalog?


Wykeham Martin Furling Gear
Polished gunmetal with steel ball bearings, this original
and world renowned pattern of furling gear has been
successfully in production for nearly 100 years.
Please note that this is a furling unit and should not be
confused with reefing gears.

[yachtie]

Nope. It used your existing forestay- to which the sail was hanked using standard piston hanks and there was a second line and top and bottom spindles that allowed the sail, hanks etc to go round the forestay. It looked pretty neat and I remember seeing the ad in the past year or so. the nifty part was that you culd switch headsails like usual and still roll it up when you didn't want to take the sail down.

[John B]

I have some vague recollection of something along those lines but it sounds like a wykham martin with issues to me.;)

[Ed Burnett]

There is a Bartels gear that can be configured to work like that:

http://www.bartelsgmbh.de/en/frameenglisch.html

Download the .pdf catalogue and it's in there.

We have used them on smallish boats and they seem to work pretty well. I would expect it to furl rather more reliably than a Wykeham Martin gear, but like the WM gear it is furling (all or nothing) only. There is no foil to transmit the twist up the luff, and in this case you also have the hanks in the middle of the roll which wouldn't do the sail any good at all.

[MAGIC's Craig]

Hey, John:

Tell us a bit more about that rig...how well it works, strengths and weaknesses, y' know, the usual straight story. Friends are installing one on their schooner and I am curious (as I get older...)

Craig Johnsen\MAGIC

[John B]

I'm a fan Craig, although I bought the boat with it ,its the one I would fit.

Basically it operates exactly the same as any other modern furler although IIRC they may have an endless rope option. The foil has a gate in it about say a metre up . You open the gate and your sail( which has sail slugs sewn in place of hanks or bolt rope) loads in . Effectively you're loading it down like you would if you were hanking on.

To go sailing you hoist on the halyard as per normal and then furl or reef or whatever as per normal.
To take the sail off you just let the halyard go and it flakes down like a hanked sail.

For us to get a little bit of semi serious racing in we just operate it like normal but we have this option for changing down or up a sail rather than just reefing.
To do this we'll be sailing with #2 say, go forward and load the #4 down. dump the #2/ change halyard over and hoist the #4 while the #2 is still trapped in its own groove, under control.

So we have to barehead but the time is minimised just to down/ up.

woiks like a charm. I don't care what they say about how good a reef you can get in a headsail with a modern sail, I'd rather make a call and change right down to a smaller heavier sail, perhaps its a 30 or 40 knot day?perhaps its a beat all day.

negatives? the slugs whistle. Otherwise, I don't know of any . Maybe one could argue that a bolt rope spreads the load through the groove better. thats out weighed by the fact that I can sit in a breeze and do a sailchange without bother and have options ( as above).

very easy to retro fit a hank sail to this type.. the slugs have webbing flaps and your sailmaker sews em on.

I'd put photos up but Photobucket has locked me out. friggin popup on the screen and I can't close it to get at the album behind it.:mad:

[John B]

Un be lievable. :mad:

finally allowed me in
gate
http://i227.photobucket.com/albums/dd48/Waione_photos/Riada/233_3370_1.jpg
loaded sail
http://i227.photobucket.com/albums/dd48/Waione_photos/Riada/233_3371_r1_1.jpg

hoisted sail
http://i227.photobucket.com/albums/dd48/Waione_photos/Riada/233_3372_r1_1.jpg

as you can see that #3 is an old hank sail with the slugs sewn on.

[Todd Bradshaw]

Kiwi Slides

http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid205/p86983ded7784ba9c73a40c79518bb80d/ef409d6d.jpg

[Zane Lewis]

We've had the Reefrite one for about 4 years now. Great concept.
Just watch that swing out gate. Very sharp if you have your hand over one edge when you close it. It's got both of us.

http://www.reefrite.co.nz/images/img9a.JPG
http://www.reefrite.co.nz/downloader_kiwi_slides.htm

Other point is the extra release line to the locking pin. John does yours have this?
Means you don't have to keep the furler line on a winch or cleat at all times. (Not good practice long turn but can be very handy for 10 minutes here and there is your are short of winches)

Zane

[John B]

Thats the stuff.
Yeah, it does Zane.
( a pin locks off the drum/ foil when the sail is reefed ) Not really too sure of the value of that yet .

[Figment]

oh I have GOT to get me one of those!!!

I really don't care about the roller part, but the ability to preload during a sail change and keep the changed sail attached and flaked on the drop sounds fantastic.

John, as I understand it, you COULD avoid the need to barehead at all during the change if you sent the replacement sail up on a second halyard, yes? The only thing requiring that momentary barehead is your use of a single halyard?

How long are those slugs? Do they dramatically increase the stacked height?

[Todd Bradshaw]

They're available in two or three sizes to fit various extrusions and the slug part is somewhere in the 1"-1.75" range, depending on which model it is.

The locking pin is there because every year somebody brings in a sail that was furled on a moored boat and somehow the wind managed to uncleat the furler line during a storm. The sail unfurls and within about ten minutes, it's absolutely beaten to death and ruined. Even if somebody sees it, phones the owner to let him know that his jib is loose and he rushes down to fix it, it's trashed before he can get there and they are seldom repairable. Always use the pin when you leave the boat. If you don't have one, tie a line snugly around the rolled jib at the thickest part of the bundle that you can reach (through the clew ring and around the area where the sheets come off is best if it's reachable from the deck). Never trust the winch or a cleat to do this when you're not on the boat.

[sv Lorelei]

John, as I understand it, you COULD avoid the need to barehead at all during the change if you sent the replacement sail up on a second halyard, yes? The only thing requiring that momentary barehead is your use of a single halyard?

Yes, I've seen that done with regular double tracked foils where the new jib is hoisted up inside the old one, then the old one is dropped, usually after tacking to bring the old sail to the inside. It also requires that you can run two sets of jib sheets though.

[John B]

oh I have GOT to get me one of those!!!

I really don't care about the roller part, but the ability to preload during a sail change and keep the changed sail attached and flaked on the drop sounds fantastic.

John, as I understand it, you COULD avoid the need to barehead at all during the change if you sent the replacement sail up on a second halyard, yes? The only thing requiring that momentary barehead is your use of a single halyard?

How long are those slugs? Do they dramatically increase the stacked height?

The problem is the halyard swivel Figment. If thats up there you can't hoist another sail.. the first sail won't come down.
It's not like a furlex where you 'convert' to race mode by dropping off the drum (and halyard swivel unit?I think you can split the casings of both to get them off) to get a clean foil. So we have to decide before 'hanking' on whether we drop the halyard swivel right on the drum and set the sails without it... then go to the twin halyards and no furling capacity. I haven't tried that yet but will before the Coastal.It concerns me that there would be a lump getting in the way of the luff down at the tack if I did that. Having said that , the previous owner preferred to tack the #1 on the deck and accepted the distortion around the drum, but so far I haven't been able to bring myself to do that.
I'll try it though.

[Figment]

It also requires that you can run two sets of jib sheets though.

Switch the lazy sheet to the new jib before the hoist, and then switch the other after the tack-and-drop.