Genoa furling – wire to dyneema?

[John Tyler]

Anyone changed their genoa furling wire for dyneema? Just as strong but fewer kinks & wire strand breakage.problems.

[Moderator]

I suspect the wire furling genoa you have was added by some previous owner. Our Rainshadow had hank-on headsails when we purchased her in 2009. We added a Harken furler.

We’ve used dyneema in various places, for example the main halyard (because we needed a very small eye splice after our sail was incorrectly built oversize) and as the control lines for our Monitor wind vane. After lessons learned from that latter use, Van decided he did not want dyneema lifelines because of the stretch and chafe. Though dyneema is tough, it is not as tough as stranded wire.

Having said that, I cannot image why a furling line would need to be a tough as wire. If furling is that hard, something is wrong.

Marilyn

[Author]

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