Tight furler

[Hayden Watson]

Not the ball bearing race. It’s a plastic sleeve that fits in the extrusions and keep them centered on the forestay.

I replaced the furling line with a thinner line for good measure.

What’s the best number of wraps around the drum when the jib is wrapped tightly?

This will depend on which furler you have. If you have a furler with a solid metal one-piece drum it probably does not matter. If you have a Harkin Mk IV, with its removable split drum, you MUST have at least 6- wraps at all times or the tiny plastic alignment taps will break and jamb your furler.

 

[skunther]

This will depend on which furler you have. If you have a furler with a solid metal one-piece drum it probably does not matter. If you have a Harkin Mk IV, with its removable split drum, you MUST have at least 6- wraps at all times or the tiny plastic alignment taps will break and jamb your furler.

Thanks, it is a one piece drum.

 

[skunther]

This probably does not adversely affect most furlers BUT, if you have a Harkin Mk IV, not having at least 6 extra turns will lead to a broken drum as I found out a couple of years ago. The Mk IV is unique in that it has a removable drum. The drum halves are held together with a couple of tiny screws into plastic tabs in the opposing part. They are not meant to hold any load and are mostly for alignment purposes. The drum is actually clamped into place buy the tension on the minimum 6-turns of line on the furler which tightly clamps the halves together and onto the big hex shape on the bearings.

I had mine setup so that I pulled the furling line until it was all off the drum and that gave me my desired 3-turns of sheets on the rolled sail. The failure almost cost me half of my two-week vacation. When that little tab broke, it jambed the drum to the cage and made it inpossible to turn the foil. I called Harkin to ask why the drum broke on my new Harkin Mk IV and to see about getting a replacement under warentee. The first thing they said was "You did not have a minimum of 6-wraps on the drum, did you." and was informed that this was a user error and not covered as clearly stated several places in the manual. Who reads those?!?!

I got lucky and a rigger in one of my ports of call, had that exact furler for is boat show demonstrating setup and sold it to me because he had time to get a replacement before the next boat show.
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That doesn’t reflect well on Harkin. It seems a very likely failure if they require at least 6 wraps for it to not break. I would expect them to engineer it in a way that doesn’t have such a risky weakness baked in.

 

[skunther]

If I remember Hood recommended removing the core in the furling drum. On my Catalina 30 i used 60’ with 20’ cored. It lays flat.

Did you lash the end cut of the core to the line? If not, do you have any issues with it bunching up? Seems coring it would address the issue well, but I’ve never cored line before.

 

[Project_Mayhem]

That doesn’t reflect well on Harkin. It seems a very likely failure if they require at least 6 wraps for it to not break. I would expect them to engineer it in a way that doesn’t have such a risky weakness baked in.

You mean you didn't remember that one line in the manual of your 30 year old furler?

 

[Hayden Watson]

That doesn’t reflect well on Harkin. It seems a very likely failure if they require at least 6 wraps for it to not break. I would expect them to engineer it in a way that doesn’t have such a risky weakness baked in.

In Harkin's defence, they did have several warnings about the need for 6-wraps minimum. I just did not read the instructions. Once you look at it, this makes complete seinse. This is on their unique furler with a removable drum so that racers can convert it from a furler to a twin track foil on race days but have the drum on for cruising. The drum would need to be much heavier to be strong enough to do all the work needed for furling if that hooping force from the 6-wrap minimum was not there and that would defeat the purpose of the light racing setup.

To say that requiring 6-wraps minimum does not reflect well on Harkin is like saying that it does not reflect well on Honda to require me to keep clean 0-W20 motor oil in my engine. It is a design requirement, and it is well noted. It is not their fault that I did not read and heed the warnings.

I am posting here so that others will not make my mistake.

 

[garymalmgren]

There are warning stickers on everything these days.
Harken could have lashed out and done something in a nice orange colour, couldn't they?