Taught myself a lesson

[BobM]

I was out for about five hours yesterday. It was quite gusty and i was on several downwind runs where the genoa was flapping around quite a bit. The lesson I inadvertently taught myself was to start securing the roller reefing line after I let the sail out. The slack line ended up jammed in the furlers spool. I had a jam, for a different reason many years ago and that one was no fun at all.

This time, I made my way to wide open waters, turned off onto a run, locked the wheel (I was solo and my auto pilot is pretty useless...have to figure out what it's problem is) and went forward. It took me about two minutes lying on the deck with my head under the spool to get it undone. No sweat.

Lesson learned though!

 

[BobT]

Lucky you had sea room to deal with it. I am looking for a way to lock the furler drum. During that nasty storm in June, when the jib leech got loose and shredded, the furler line was nearly sawn through by the edge of the drum cover. There is a pair of holes in the drum flanges to slip a locking object through to prevent that. When looking at big carabiners in an EMS climbing store the young feller suggested a "parabiner". Need to follow up on that... It would be good to be able to roll in a reef and not have all the pressure on the line.

 

[BobM]

That is an old lesson. When I first started sailing I didn't think that I had to do anything beyond winding a few wraps of the sheet around the jib to hold it. It came loose in a storm and only the intervention of a fellow WYC member saved my rig. I had a $300 repair on the sail. I usually just tie a rope or sail tie around the furled sail as high as I can reach.

A parabiner seems to be just a locking carabiner. To be frank, I'd probably avoid anything with threads to lock it for a salt water application.