Behind the mast mainsail furling

[Graham Ballett]

Due to the advance of the years I am thinking of installing behind the mast main furling on my Konsort and wonder if anyone has had a Facnor system fitted and if so how it has performed. If there is a boat in the Poole area with this I would really appreciate a look at it. Also, was the mast left standing for fitting or did it have to be struck and which firm did the job?

[TyroSailor]

I am not a fan, in principle, of this system although I have no experience of using it, so you may wish to ignore the following...
For:

• Convenience
  Ease of use (when it works)

Against:

• What happens when it jams open just as you start to reef in a rising gale?
  When you have reefed, the centre of mass (or gravity if you prefer) is still just as high as before
  When reefed, the centre of effort moves a long way forward and this may produce lee helm, unless the jib is reefed more than might otherwise be necessary
  The sail has to be cut pretty flat to roll up properly, which means a lack of power in light winds
  It's not possible to have (horizontal) battens to support the roach, so you either have no roach (smaller sail area and less efficient shape) or vertical battens (about which I can't comment).

Having said all that, some people seem to have them, and they seem to work alright. They're probaby more reliable than they used to be. I know Hillary has a similar system on his Centaur and gets on OK with it.

[Fulmar433]

Like TyroSailor I'm not a fan of it. I have only ever sailed once with it and wasn't impressed. Yes it was easy to unroll and roll away again. It was fitted to my Father in Law's Konsort and I wasn't impressed with the performance. To be fair, the boat was out in Spain and rarely went anywhere, so probably was quite heavily fouled. The sail seemed to have considerably less area than the standard sail and just seemed a flat piece of sail cloth.

[Jolly Roger]

I agree that I am not a fan. My parents used to have a furling main and the sail was smaller than normal and had little shape.

The potential for jamming is more likely with a retrofit than an original a purpose built furling mast.

Also I know of a Moody owner had a retrofit furler and had his mainsail altered to fit. It worked OK. He then decided on a new mainsail in a slightly heavier cloth, unfortunately it would no long completely furl and about 75cm would not fit and remained exposed.

[steve parry]

Hi Graham,

Like the rest not a great fan of behind the mast reefing. Too much weight up the mast for my liking and like someone has already said what happens if it jams which results in major problems all round. I have on my Pentland in boom reefing (SAILTAINER) and it works well, if it jams (which it hasn't done in 25 years of having two systems on different yachts) all you do is pull down the main and secure it to the boom and sort it out later.

I was in Roscoff two years ago and a New Zealand couple pulled into the new marina with the mainsail in a right mess. They said they were one hour out of Plymouth and they had to shake out a few rolls of the main and it had jammed on them so they had to sail all the way from Plymouth with the problem. Well to cut a long story short; It took me and the couple nearly two hours to un-jam it and he spent those two hours up the mast whilst I was in the cockpit with lines,boom and reefing mechanism pulling it in and out and lifting the boom to take the weight of the mainsail. This was a 45 footer so we were all very knackered at the end.

So that is why I am not keen on them.

Regards

Steve Parry - WALKABOUT

[Hillary]

Like Steve on Tyro said I have in-mast reefing and know another Centaur owner with a slightly more modern in-mast reefing system. He said that you need to learn the systems idiosyncrasies for example its important to have a bit of tension on the sail as you reef it in. But if you do then you don't have any problems. I have used my in mast reefing without any issues for two seasons but only in normal conditions.

I do like the fact that I can deploy the sail or reef it from the cockpit and I can see that it makes single handed sailing simpler. I don't know how much speed it costs me as Moonshine came equipped with the Easyreef furller when i bought her. The old traveller car is worn and the mainsail is old so this season I am fitting a new traveller car and new Main sails. Then I think I will be doing some speed trials with Tyro and then we should see how much speed it costs me. (Steve is a better sailor too).

Regards,

Hillary

[TyroSailor]

Good to hear that, Hillary, but it remains to be proved! I shall have to clean my bottom.