J/30 Class Association Forums J/30 Forum The Boat, Sails and Equipment looking for roller furling

Hi
I am slowly breaking down to the demands of the admiral ( wife ) and at least considering a roller furler for the J.

I do not want to spent a fortune... hate to cut down sails...

I do not want to have done anything to the sails, I want to use the roller furling just to roll the sail up completely or completely out , nothing in between.

I heard about split drum design ?

We race the boat on low key beer races about 10 times a year , doing pretty good with a skipper and wife crew, with no ambition to sail big events.

Anybody can point me in the right direction ?

Thanks Thorsten

I have a Harken system. I don't know if it is split drum or not, but I've found that a snap shackle can be placed on the forestay fitting, which, when attached to the tack of the jib, places the luff of the sail aft far enough that the luff is clear of the drum. I don't even have to remove the swivel, since the luff is short the length of the headstay by more than the length of the swivel. So I don't have to remove any hardware to fly my #1 jib. But obviously, with the tack attached to the deck instead of the drum, I can't furl the sail.

My #2 and #3 dacron jibs are both cut for roller furling. I just use my #1 mylar for racing.

thor,

I want to sell my Harken unit, which is a split drum, and go with a tuff luff. Since it is off my J/30, it would be a real easy fit to your J/30.

We just dont use it like we thought we would, for family sailing with us two & the two kids, but it's great for that. It has seen light use for about 2 or 3 summers on freshwater Lake Michigan. I would like to have you take the entire kit including the foil, stay, furling line pulley kit, etc. I can dis-assemble the extruded. foil for shipping. It breaks down into 3 or 4 sections.

It is a fine well-engineered unit, and operates very nicely. It is a furling unit, meaning you take a tuck in the sail to reduce area. Or not. It can be nice, when coupled with the backstay, to turn your #1 into a #2, and jack down the backstay, you really have a large range of depower when you need it.

To oversimplify, either your sails furl or they dont. If they dont they are too short, and the easy answer is a short length of wire (pennant) so the halyard exits the sheave box toward the top swivel at a roughly 45 degree angle.

Please contact me here:

delltodd (at) ameritech.net

Thank you.

Dell

I just went through this process. I did a fair amount of research on different furling units and spoke with lots of people. Came down to the "popular" choice of Harken III, unit 1. I also decided to have a new 145 triradial genoa made for the unit by Doyle. (I was more concerned about cruising and PHRF than one design. Also wanted to reduce power a bit since I don't have a lot of "railmeat" in my normal crew.) It has a higher cut clew so you can see under it. I had older class sails from Haarstick with hanks. You need to have lufftape if you don't already and you will likely need to cut down your class sails to work with the furling unit. It is a combination of the "airblock" at top of halyard and the height of the drum off the deck. You can take the drum off but you may have to take off airblock or use #2 halyard to hoist other non-furling sails. Removing the airblock would require disconnecting forestay. Not something you will likely want to do! Also you need to know that forestay will need to be shortened (cut) for Harken unit. My existing one was in good shape so I kept it as a spare and had a new one made. I will tell you that the unit works great and it is much less wear and tear than getting up on the foredeck to change sails! The only downside is that the units are pretty expensive. If you can find a good used one, I would go for it. But also assume you will have to save some $ to modify your sails. Hope this helps.