[Public-List] roller furling

[Don Campbell]

     Several questions have now arisen over roller furling and hank-ons, 
racing efficiency and double forestay wires.
     To start with, two forestays will change the air on the foresail 
from undisturbed to disturbed and will decrease performance appreciably. 
They will also cause drag which, when you look up the texts, is also 
appreciable. In my opinion, if you change from a furling to non-furling 
system, you should be changing the wire of both the forestay and 
backstay to even out the stretch of both wires at the same time. Any 
wire behind (by 8" or 24" even)   the stay on the head of the boat, will 
make tacking a sail in a reasonable time on the front wire almost 
impossible if you want the sail in front of the second wire. Without 
that, you will have some entry! (From what I saw of Jean du Sud this 
summer, Yves second forestay is tied to his mast when not in use and 
when in use there is no tacking sail on the forestay. He also has 
running back stays to support the second forestay and they are in place 
all the time, so another set of lines to get around, - in and out of the 
cockpit. This is an ocean cruising rig with two sets of spreaders, and 
speed is not the priority, getting there safely is so the mainsail is 12 
oz cloth with three very reinforced corners, 2 for reefs for instance!)
      The name is a furling system, not a reefing system, and Larry has 
it correct when he says  that you never sail with any reef in the 
foresail. I have chosen a Harken system for the narrow leading edge and 
have never noticed any lack of performance in races due to that system. 
You will have much more power loss due to poor sail shape and wear from 
age.  Most race sails should be not much older than 100 races to be 
truly competitive, in my opinion and experience.
     I, too, have been able to keep up with big Beneteaus and attribute 
that to a lack of desire on the other skipper to sail well or a boat 
that will not move easily. I have never tried sailing one of them 
though. It may also be the cut on the sail that is just poor for speed. 
That is not the case on all Beneteaus though as some , like Kick-Em 
Jenny, a 36-7, have done very well in the Heineken regatta.   I believe 
that the big America's Cup boats have roller furling and that they are 
prepared to give up the confused entry downwind from a rolled sail for 
time to get it out of the way and back up over pulling it up and down.  
   With smaller sails like ours, It becomes the skippers choice but is 
also a factor of crew strength and frequency of sail changes and 
conditions that you want to go forward to change sails in. I am not so 
sure that I would have furling on a trans-Atlantic trip because I don't 
think the connection of the head piece at the bow is sufficient to hold 
the forestay and rolled foresail on in a blow that one will encounter on 
the ocean. That fastening should be strengthened in my opinion whatever 
the rig is for trans ocean sailing.
     One cannot make a new sail out of an old sail by changing the 
leading edge either to or from hank-ons, or by adding Sunbrella® to the 
leach and foot. It can be done,  so that you may continue to use sails 
when you change from one system to the other. If you do change and have 
several sails to adapt, (and it may be more to your liking after the 
fact),   get one new sail and only one changed and you will enjoy 
sailing that much more with the new sail.
Don #528