Pro-furl problems

[Roland Forsman]

The Pro-furl furler on my 1985 C30 appears to be stuck at the top of the forestay profile. This boat is new to me and I am trying to take down the genoa to clean it. The furler works fine to unfurl and furl the sail, but I am not able to lower the genoa. Maybe I am doing something wrong, so here is what I did:1. Unfurled the genoa and let is fly lose in the light wind.2. Released the genoa halyard in hope the sail would come down by itself. Nothing happened.3. With the halyard still released I tried to pull down the genoa by pulling down hard on the sail itself close to the furling profile (headstay). The genoa did not move down an inch.4. Here I gave up and furled up the genoa and left it on the boat.Am I missing something, or do you think the top portion of the furler is stuck to the headstay profile. When I go out to the boat the next time I will bring my binoculars and see if I can get a closer look at the top of the furler.Any help would be greatly appreciated.Roland"Alien One"

 

[Rod Worrell]

A Long Shot

Roland, its a long shot, but from your deck or the dock, can you tell if the halyard is wrapped in anyway around the headstay? This can happen if the halyard is parallel to the headstay as it comes out of the top of the mast. If this is the case, it can be fixed with a halyard retainer that is attached to the mast near the top to create an angle away from the headstay. In your case, though, to get your sail down (if the halyard is wrapped), then you will probably need to take a ride to the top to untangle the halyard. Go ahead and put the retainer on then, too, while you're up there. Someone else may have some other thoughts. If this isn't the solution, let us know what you find out.S/V Dixie

 

[Don]

Another longshot

Your boat should have internal halyards. Remove the halyard blocks from the base on the mast and make sure the halyard is not bound up on radio coax or mast wiring. Make sure the main halyard is not wrapped around the jib halyard by running the main back and forth and looking for associate movement of the jib halyard. If all that looks good, have a nice ride up the mast. This is is a real long shot, but I did see a c-30 once that the halyard was wrapped around the bolt that holds cap shrouds and top plate on. The sail had to be winched up and was a real bear to get down. Just a thought.

 

[Roland Forsman]

Got it down

Thanks for your responses. By using my binoculars I was able to see that the problem was the big knot used to tie the halyard to the shackle holding the top portion of the furler. I could then turn the profile back and forth while pulling down hard on the genoa, and this way the knot slipped over the fixed top portion of the furler allowing me to pull the genoa down.I believe this sail had not been down for a long time and some waxing or other friction reduction of the slot in the furler profile will be needed before I raise the sail again.Any suggestions what to use and how?Roland

 

[Rod Worrell]

Use McLube

It was fun to see how we all have had some personal experience to share, of which, by you just doing it, now you do too. Spray some McLube on your track. You can get it at Boat US or West Marine.S/V Dixie

 

[Mike Gibson]

Splice

Roland, another thing you may want to do when you put your genoa up the next time is to eliminate the knot at the top. You may consider having the shackle spliced to the halyard. Good luck. Mike