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The advice given on this site is based upon individual or quoted experience, yours may differ.
The Officers, Staff and members of this site only provide information based upon the concept that anyone utilizing this information does so at their own risk and holds harmless all contributors to this site.
The last four feet of sail does not roll in. It has worked fine for last ten yrs. Added more line in furler. Made no difference. Any ideas appreciated.
1985 Catalina 25 Fin Keel #5160 "Mottley Crew" Spring Grove, IL
Roller furling issues are fresh in my mind since I just yesterday re-loaded my furling drum with new line, and bent on my sail. I got it completely backwards and we had to re-wrap the furling line underway and then once at the dock, take the sheets back off and re-wrap the sail the right way round. So, having made pretty much all the possible mistakes just a day ago, I feel like I ought to be able to help somewhat here.
You say that adding more line to the drum doesn’t help - does that mean that when you first encountered the problem, pulling all the line off the drum left you with four feet of headsail poking out? With more wraps on the drum, do you still run out of line before you run out of sail? Or, does the furler bind with four feet of headsail out consistently regardless of the state of the furling line? If you try leaving the line be and rolling the sail up by hand, does the furler still bind at that point?
The issue I can think of that doesn’t involve the drum and line at all is halyard wrap, where the top swivel or top of the headsail “burrito” snags the jib halyard and gets hung up. If the issue is consistently when you you have four feet of headsail remaining, my guess would be that if you look aloft you’ll see that at that point something is just exactly impinging on the halyard, or a spinnaker crane, or something like that.
1985 C25 SR/FK/Trad. “Puffin III” - #5040 Sailing Lake Michigan out of Michigan City, IN
Agreed, I’ve struggled with the furler in years past, and it was very frustrating. May I suggest that you remove the jib sheets and hand-wrap the jib/genoa a few more wraps and that should solve the problems with incomplete rollup of your jib sail. If, however, you cannot fully deploy the jib sheet, your furler drum might be binding. The usual cause of binding is a bad wrap - favoring one side of the drum, or the line is too thick furling drum. If this is the problem, you might decide to use a thinner furling line on the drum, then be sure that the line has sufficient strength to manage the jib furler in strong windy conditions. Hopefully, this will work for you.
"The last four feet" is when most of the furling line has left the drum, so something else is going on. What kind of furler? By "added more line in the furler" do you mean you added wraps on the drum before bending on the sail? If we're not talking about a CDI, I agree with the possibility of a halyard wrap. Do you have a block on the front of the mast, a little above the level of the furler swivel when the sail is fully hoisted? Is the halyard going down inside that "restrainer" block and then out to the swivel? The purpose is for the halyard tension on an angle to prevent the top of the swivel from turning and letting the halyard wrap around the stay. Good halyard tension is also important.
Dave Bristle Association "Port Captain" for Mystic/Stonington CT PO of 1985 C-25 SR/FK #5032 Passage, USCG "sixpack" (expired), Now on Eastern 27 $+!nkp*+ Sarge
Notice: The advice given on this site is based upon individual or quoted experience, yours may differ. The Officers, Staff and members of this site only provide information based upon the concept that anyone utilizing this information does so at their own risk and holds harmless all contributors to this site.