Roller Furling Jenny

Hi George –

When we purchased Rainshadow, she had hank-on sails still (and the original sails as well). We sailed her for one season with these hank-ons, and Van loved the simplicity of the hank-on approach. However, I frequently sat white-knuckled at the helm while he was hoisting or lowering the head sail in heavy seas, so I was rather insistent that we change to a roller furler (We had one on our previous boat, so I knew of its luxury).

We installed a Harken Mark IV Unit 1 roller furler. It required a haylard restrainer be installed at the top to ensure the correct fair lead to avoid haylard wraps. You can see a photo of this installed restrainer here. This restrainer is a harken part as well.

We installed the drum using long link plates in order to keep the drum away from the anchor roller and to get the foot of the sail above the pulpit, as can be seen here. This lost a lot of sail area, but makes it easier to see at the helm. I’m not sure Van (as the deckhand) likes this – I’ll see if I can get him to post later.

Performance is good – once we had the sail sized appropriately for the forestay length, we’ve had no problems with haylard wraps. The trick is to keep the correct tension on the halyard – too tight and it does not roll nicely, too loose and it may wrap. It’s handy to be able to furl and unfurl the sail from the cockpit, especially when the seas are scary rough and it’s time to reef. Even Van has admitted that he is glad we installed it.

If we could do it over, we would add a solent stay and buy a big hank-on light air sail (maybe a drifter). We would buy a working jib to put on the furling drum. Then, when the seas are smooth with light air, Van could easily go forward to hank-on the drifter, and as the wind builds, we could switch to the working jib that could be roller furled smaller. As it is, we bought a 130% genoa for the furler that can be reefed to a working jib. That means if we need a smaller headsail, Van is on deck in the worst seas hanking on a storm jib (on the solent stay that we have yet to add, so we’ve not done this in practice yet).

Another word of advice, the headsail gets chaffed at the lower end of the foil, even if you have the harken feeder to help guide the sail into the foil track when you are raising it. We just took our 3 -season old sails to a top-quality sailmaker (Port Townsend Sails) for beefing up this sail to make it better for offshore work. There were a lot of modifications required at both the tack and the clew as the original sailmaker (North Sails) did not build it for longevity with a furler. So be concerned not only about the quality of the furler you purchase, but also the quality of the sail that will be used with it.

Hope that helps. Marilyn

Hi Charles,

yes, the halyard restrainer is mandatory. Because of the geometry at the mast head, without the restrainer the angle of the halyard to the swivel at the top of the furler is too small to prevent wrapping. The restrainer was easy to install, it’s held on with six fasteners (I used machine screws which required tapping holes, but a local rigger told me I should have just used monel rivets which are faster and simpler).

We used the long link plates to get the sail foot over the pulpit rails, and get the drum out of the way of the ground tackle. We almost always anchor (avoiding marinas) and that’s an area where you don’t want to be cramped for space. I sometimes wish I’d had slightly shorter link plates to get a little more sail area, but really, it’s not a big deal.

Re Marilyn’s point about sail plans, the problem with our 130% genoa is that in order to be useful as a heavy air sail when partially furled, it has to be strong and therefore heavy. This makes it a poor light air sail.

OTOH, when reefed to say 80%, it has poor shape. So, it’s not really optimal in either set of conditions. Contrast that with a hanked on light air sail on a solent stay, easy to set and douse and very effective in light airs; pair that with a strong working jib on the furler and you get great light air performance and great heavy air performance.

Of course, eventually, even the furled sail will be over powered, and then you’ll be hanking on a storm jib onto the solent stay.

Well, that’s the theory and someday I plan to change our plan to that.

Van

I have 2 forstays on Aquarius & assumed this was std on Nic 38s. One [the LHS] has a furling system, using an enclosed wire [4-5mm] going back down the port hand-side [just inside the rail] to the cockpit & a winch on top of the rear coachroof – right of sliding hatch looking aft. It makes single-handed sailing easier [& I can send photos].

Hello everyone, We sometimes have problems with oour furling genoa that blocks…. I saw a comment from Van on the geometry of the head of mast.

Van said that the angle of the halyard to the swivel at the top of the furler is too small to prevent wrapping

Can somebody explain me the solution, Van explain that he has installed 6 fasteners

Thanks

Anne

One of our many learning experiences aboard Voltair concerned the roller furling of the Genny, using the Harken Mark 1 furling system. First of all, our tendency was to pull the jib halyard up too tight (some of our crew used to sail GP14 dinghies which use the sail luff as a forestay) and then we found we couldn’t furl or unfurl it.

Having overcome that problem by slackening the halyard just enough,  we got over the first 5 years of ownership without looking too closely at the swivelling mechanism at the top. However, one day, Robin and crew, who were at about 69degrees North, well up into the Arctic Circle, wanted to loose out a bit more sail and immediately had a hailstorm of plastic balls from “upstairs”, most of which ended up in the sea. … and of course the sail fell down and had to be taken off!

To cut a long story short, we replaced those damn balls three times while we were in Scandinavia, but gradually we got more cunning, and re-worked the awful Mark 1 swivel into a unique Voltair design that did not have the same reliance on 0.030″ of engagement of circlips into grooves as the designer somehow thought would be adequate. The last time we had a shower of balls was in 2008, when we were heading south to Gothenburg, and were just north of the island of Marstrand. I was skippering, and got on the phone to Robin in England to find out where the Swedish agent for Harken hung out……… by the time he found the answer, we were berthed up for the evening in the town. Where was the sole source of Harken parts in Sweden? “on a small island called Marstrand”, said Robin – neither of us could quite believe our luck! Within an hour Erich Hagen, the MD of the Swedish subsidiary, and his wife were aboard, bringing with them 70 more of the little (but expensive) torlon plastic bearings, and consuming a large GnT. We discussed the problems with the unit, and finalised our ultimate modification to avoid further disasters.

Ten years (and no more hail) later, Voltair still has what I think must be the only serviceable Mark 1 Harken swivel in existance (my card-index says it was a “1-1841”) whatever that is, and Joe, the new owner, has some spare plastic balls in a poly bag…

It was always too heavy a pull to furl or unfurl the jib in any breeze by just pulling on the rope as it came off the turning block, but this was right by the primary port sheet winch, so we used that to haul it in/control it paying out, and installed a rope clutch just in front of the turning block to stop it. (One of our pals had, on a charter yacht in the Aegean, lost a large chunk of index finger into a turning block that was only “protected” by a jam cleat after the turning block, so we installed the clutch before the block to make sure this couldn’t happen on Voltair)

John Kingsley – October 2018