stuck?
henk, i'm having a hard time visualizing how a half-furled main is going to get "stuck." even if a main is loosly/sloppily furled, it might tend to jam at first, but once about 30% of the sail is pulled out there is no longer enough material inside the mast to cause a problem. when i was first learning to use my system i had a couple situations where i had to work it back and forth a few times to free a wrinkle, but this is really not a hard process--nothing like having to free a sheet that wrapped on a winch. anyway, you're right in that the sail will have to be pulled all the way out to drop it. the fear of not being able to accomplish this, however, is misplaced. perhaps a few of the early, 1980's era in-mast furling systems had problems, but i'll tell you that the system on my boat (seldon) is about as close to bomb-proof as you're ever going to get in a sailboat. i'm much more likely to jam my jib furler than my main, especially if i've been playing with the spinnaker. so what happens if you jam a jib furler? let's suppose that you've attempted to roll it up and the spinnaker halyard wrapped up in it. easy to fix, you simply unroll it, stow the halyard properly, and then roll it back up. same thing with a furling main, if it "jams" on the way out, roll it back in a few inches, allowing it to free itself, and then roll it back....... okay, so lets look at the other side of in-mast furling. suppose you see a squaw coming on the horizon. a big one. you decide to put the main away. two steps: (1) you release the outhaul, (2) you pull in on the inhaul. zip. on a big boat like a 410 this takes all of 10 seconds, even for my petite (5'3") wife. you never have to leave the cockpit. when the winds freshen up in the afternoon, we instantly can have the exact size mainsail we need, without having to go forward to reset a cunningham, et cetera. that's safety. how often, with conventional systems, do you see situations where someone has to go to the mast to pull down on the main because there's too much pressure on the sail track? all the time, especially in high winds. this is not a problem with in-mast furling............ i find it interesting that the people who are always talking about these systems "jamming" are people who haven't used them. are there boat owners out there who have had jamming problems on their own systems? if so, please let us hear about them, and let us know what system you have (i.e.: hood, z-spar, seldon). i admit that i wouldn't own an in-mast furler if i lived in a light-air region such as southern california. but i don't. in my home waters we pretty much expect 25 knots of breeze every afternoon. am i willing to sacrifice a bit of power to gain the safety of in-mast furling? you betcha. that's why i also opted for a deep keel and for 9-ounce working sails. all boats/rigs are compromises. and i'll tell you, with over 100 sailing days logged on the new rig, it's the safest thing going in big winds. as i've said before, it takes me longer to don my foulies than it does to shorten sail.
