We have owned our O'Day 25 for just one year now. A very fun boat! We are looking to purchase new sails and to add a furling systems. We are asking for suggestions from owners of 25' O'Days as to which systems may do the best job for us...thank you for taking the time to contact us with your thoughts...
Jib furling systems and sails
- Thread starter Jeff Janice Whipple
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Or try and purchase the furler and the jib separately discussing your plan with a sail maker, I think a package is the quick and easy way to go
http://www.sailcdi.com/welcome.htm
http://www.sailcdi.com/welcome.htm
I purchased the CDI Roller Furler FF4 & a 150 Coastal sail from Sail Warehouse a couple years ago and am very happy with purchase. I love the convenience & safety of not having to run forward to pull down & secure the head sail. Just yesterday while sailing with variable winds, I must have pulled out and put back the roller furling headsail about a half dozen times while on my way back. I would never have bothered with a regular hanked on sail.
The install is pretty easy. Just make sure you follow instructions of letting the plastic luff extrusion uncurl properly from shipping. Don't buy it before you can install it relatively soon.
The install is pretty easy. Just make sure you follow instructions of letting the plastic luff extrusion uncurl properly from shipping. Don't buy it before you can install it relatively soon.
If you are going to trailer your boat a lot (stepping and unstepping the mast frequently), you might want to consider a flexible furler of which there are two brands which come to mind. CDI (Cruising Design) or the Schaefer Snap Furl. The CDI uses their own halyard system and so you will not need your existing jib halyard. This is by far the least expensive furler out there. It works good, but not very sophisticated. The SnapFurl uses your existing halyard and so if you have more than one, you can use both for headsail changes on the double groove, but most people except racers put it up once and leave it up. If you keep the mast up all year then you might want to consider a furler with an aluminum extrusion, which are usually of better quality and work the best, but obviously are more expensive. The ones that come to mind are Hood, Harken, Schaefer, ProFurl, and Furlex (there are others, of course). These are all decent systems, but I think the best, by far, is the Furlex. Many of these brands sell you the basic furler and then you have to add the block kit for bringing the furling line aft and the halyard restrainer to eliminate halyard wrap for additional money. Furlex includes these in their initial package and also you get a new forestay which assures quality control over all the components. With the others you put a new furler on an old forestay. If you compare prices with the top of the line systems, then I think you will find Furlex quite competitively priced. The one thing you want to do to make your installation go better, is to get the exact pin to pin measurement of your forestay with the mast up and tuned. If you cannot get that while the mast is up, then mark your forestay turnbuckle with tape so you know where the exact location of adjustment is so you can recreate that measurement which you will need before you start the assembly of any system.
Just this year I had a CDI FF4 furler installed on my O'day 25 and it is great, no more flaking sails on the dock! We worked with our local sailmaker (Dieball Sailing in Toledo, OH) and they made us a new 150% Genoa to go with it. The nice thing about working with our local guy is he came to the boat to review our current sails and they were able to convert one of our hank on jibs to a furling jib, so we also have a back up sail if needed. If your currrent sails are in good shape, you may be able to have yours converted instead of buying new. They also helped me install the furler. It looks easy enough, but since I had no experience with a furler before this, it was nice to have experienced help. Good luck!
You may also want to talk with strictly sail in cincinnati, Ohio. I ordered my CDI FF4 from them and the price was good. Also, spend the extra money on the roller bearings up front. Don't wait to do that upgrade. We installed ours in the water with the mast up. If you go that route, have someone who has done that before help. We had a guy help us who had installed a few of these and it still took five hours and a trip up the mast to verify the length of the forstay before we cut. good luck.
I love my CDI Roller Furler. Especially now that I have reached "Geezerdom.
If you buy the package, have the UV shield installed on the Gennie. Your O'Day 25 probably has toggle fittings on both ends of the fore stay which is what is required for a roller furler with a vinyl luff that fits over the fore stay.
My fore stay had T ball fittings and I had to add a tang to my mast and change the swaged fitting on my fore stay. I have a Z-Spar mast with internal halyards and plates with slots for T ball fittings.
Prior to installing my roller furler, I had installed a Bruce bow anchor roller for my F-11 Fortress Anchor, so I added a 5'' tang to my bow chainplate to gain some height under the furler drum to operate my anchor. This meant having my sail re-cut, along with converting it over for the roller furler.
So if you don't have an anchor roller, and you plan on installing one on your boat some day, this would be the time to do it rather than later.
That's it. Good luck!
Joe
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