Hood Sea Furl 5 253 Failure Mode

[Dan_Y]

Our 10 year old Hood Sea Furl 5 253 experienced a separation of the drum from the tube that transfers furling torque to the foil. 75% of the bearing balls went over the side. The torque tube sits in the top of the drum and appears to be held in the drum with SS pins/screws while the tube and drum are made of AL. Maybe some dissimilar metal corrosion. I should have been off the wind more when trying to furl from 25% to 50%.... It was under load. However, I wouldn’t think I could distort the tube just by pulling by hand alone (no winch). Interesting the Hood brochure shows the 253 for boats up to 34 ft. I’m thinking HM could use it because the 36 is a fractional rig with a 110 or 115 jib.
Has anyone experienced this failure? Hopefully I can get a new drive unit from Hood. It was exciting when the jib unfurled in an instant. We ended up dropping the jib through the front hatch.

 

[Dan_Y]

Update: After talking to Hood today, I’m shipping the drive unit back to Hood in Tampa to have it rebuilt. Hood support seems excellent so far. I used the jib halyard and topping lift attached to the anchor structure (whatever that’s called) to hold the mast up and was able to take the forestay turnbuckle off and slide the unit off without loosening the cap shrouds or lower shrouds. What a relief! Stay tuned.

 

[Whatfiero1]

Good to hear Hood still supports that unit . As older units have limited parts available

 

[Dan_Y]

I agree whatfiero. Turns out the entire Hood Furler product that’s on their website (last updated in 2007) is still available new. The fellow I’m dealing with at Hood may be one of the designers and for sure he manufacturers/builds them and was around when the h36 line incorporated the 253. He mentioned the 253 had some production improvements some years back to help prevent this failure and will be part of the rebuild. He also stressed making sure an isolator like tefgel was used during reassembly. In fact, for the screws that require thread locker to be applied, he said to apply the locker at the end of the thread and still apply tefgel under the screw head, trying to get as much dissimilar metal isolation as possible. He said these furlers should last a long time if assembled properly. To be fair, our boat spent some time in charter before we bought it and the furling line may have been winched and stressed the drive unit. I do plan to add a ratcheting block to help when furling though and try to remember better furling technique like being off the wind...

 

[Dan_Y]

Final update: Got GREAT customer service from Mike and Marty at Hood Yacht Systems. Replaced bearings and updated the tack attach point on the furler to make it beefier. I had the repaired/updated drive unit back within 5 days of sending it out (VA to FL)! I sent Mike a text to ask an installation question and got a response pretty quickly. He also kept stressing to use lots of Tef-Gel during reassembly.
Dan