How has your roller furling failed

Hi,


I am looking at my very old furler (1979 vintage), and trying to anticipate where it might fail. So, what's the collective experience of furler failures?


This raises what I have. I will describe it generically. It has a large (10 inch) diamter aluminum drum that is of split type. It rides on a large delrin (I believe) bearing - the bearing is new. It has asymetrical foils, made of aluminum, that are connected by splined torque links. All the torque links are new. The top foil has a head piece on it that supports the internal halyard (halyard runs in the foils). All in all it is a very simple system, and currently works. I am trying to figure out how and when this might fail (I know, when it's blowing very hard, and there are lots of waves....).

Any thoughts would be appreciated. I am not mentioning who made it as people confuse it with another unit from the same manufacturer that had a very troublesome halyard mechanism, which mine does not. So, to keep from just getting an "ok, that's junk" response based on thinking it's what it's not, I will wait until someone says they just have to know....



-David
Independence 31
Emerald

Never had one fail.
Halyard wraps at the head but never a failure?

Mike T
E-29

Sounds like an early Cruising Designs

If I hear you right, it has its' own, non-adjustable halyard, right? Not my favorite since you cannot adjust hal. tension while sailing for various conditions, but with all those new parts, you might hang on for a while, IMHO

S

Hi Seth,

Actually, it's halyard tension is adjustable, and easily. The foils have two slots, one for the sail and the other for the internal halyard and slug to ride in. The internal halyard is actually pretty neat and simple. The slug has a short rope tail on one end (the end you pull on), and then the other side of the slug is connected to a wire that runs up to the head unit, over a sheave and out the base of the head unit (so the halyard can't jump off etc) and is then aligned with the slot for the luff. For the initial hoist, you do need to extend the rope tail by tying a messenger to it, but you untie it once the sail is almost all the way up, and then the rope tail comes down through a cam cleat and guide on the snout of the drum. Below the cam cleat a removable caming arm "winching mechanism" is used to tighten it up as much as you like. I've surprised myself with how much tension I can generate, granted it is probably not as much as possible with a decent size winch on the mast, but certainly adequate for performance cruising

I don't know that my description does it justice. It's one of these things that seems to work pretty well, and makes me wonder why some of the more complex designs came along later.

Thanks for the input. I hate to spend money to spend money, but I must admit, I've been a fan of hanking sails for years, and this is the first furler I've had, and well, I've become addicted to the ease of the critter, and don't really want to give it up, hence trying to figure out longevity of what I've got and what might replace it if deemed necessary. I get the distinct feeling that with such a simple design, as long as it is maintained and inspected regularly, it may be good for another 10+ years.


-David
Independence 31
Emerald