I will doing some work on my in the next month or so and I have a question about removing the foresail.
I plan to remove and clean my sails. They haven't been off the boat in a couple of years (PO kept the boat in the water at Tarpon Springs, FL and they have some spider cocoons, stains, and mildew...I have only owned it about 2 months).
Can I unhook the top of the furler from the mast and then take the whole thing off the boat to lay the sail out and clean it while still in the furler tape? Or is it best to remove the 150 Genny from the furler itself? Seems like it might be easier to leave it in the furler and remove the whole furler from the mast.
Depends. My boat is stored mast-up on the trailer. It would be much easier to remove the sail from the foil ... mast remains up. Then I can fold the sail, toss into the pickup and haul it home for cleaning.
If yours is mast-down in the backyard ... so you won't need to transport the furler ... then, I guess your bottom pin is already out, so you have just the bolt thru the hounds on the mast.
While at it, you can disassemble the furler to learn all its parts, and examine the forestay wire, by just slipping-off the plastic foil. Make sure the wire isn't kinked, and check the top & bottom crimps for cracks or corrosion. I found my forestay had been kinked sometime in its history, so I had a rigger make a new one - shorter in my case, to adjust the mast rake.
Thanks. Yes the boat will be sitting in my driveway, mast down, for a month or so as I prepare for a business trip to Norfolk VA (mid April to mid June). I plan to take my Mac with me. Two months in a school with no wife or kids to interfere with sailing every weekend
So before I go I will bring the boat to my home in GA (from its usual location in Jacksonville FL) so that I can clean it, wax/polish it, and do some other minor mods.
I will take the whole furler off and use that opportunity to check out the entire system.
One more thing ... while it's easy to remove your furler down to the driveway, removing and reinstalling the Genoa won't necessarily be so easy! Reinstallation of a Genoa will be particularly troublesome.
With mast-up, you can do all of this by yourself. With the furler lying on the ground, seems to me that you might need two others to help hold the furler. When erect on the boat, the mast, the bow and the forestay hold the furler for you.
Post again if you need hints on the actual process to change a furled sail.
Actually my thought was that I would not actually remove the genoa from the furler. Just remove the furler with the sail still attached, lay it out in my yard (or maybe in my garage) and clean it with soap and a brush. Then rinse and let it dry. All while attached to the furler.
I will look more closely at the furler equipment (try to figure out how to actually look at the turnbuckle under that black furling drum...haven't figured out how to take it off yet) and then reattach to the mast.
Do you see any difficulties in this that I haven't thought about?
Jim, I think its a good idea to take the sail off the furler once in a while for multiple reasons. Although if you only have one sail, then its not as much of an issue. If you do have multiple sails - and the factory jib really is a much nicer sail for winds above 12, then its good to learn how to put sails on and off (don't forget the messenger line or else you would lose the halyard up high when the sail drops). Secondly, these luff tracks tend to work much better when they are used more frequently. Ie, use it or lose it. If the sail never comes out of there, then dust, dirt, grime, mildew, etc are going to get permanently lodged in the tracks and make it harder to put sails up and down.
And finally, the best way to clean sails I have found is to let them soak in a swimming pool for a few hours, then brush the really dirty spots as it is coming out. Even if you don't have a pool, then maybe someone you know does. Of course, you can always pay a sailmaker to wash them too but a pool works just as good. When I first got my boat, my genoa had been on the furler for at least 6 months in the mast down position with no U/V cover. The sail was completely green and I figured it must be a gonner. Soaked it overnight in the pool and it came out white as snow...I was amazed. I immediately had a sailmaker put a U/V cover on it also which was a good idea because now 3.5 years later, the dacron has some cracks where it got exposed to the U/V for too long but the cover is basically holding it together (reinforcing the exposed edges) and I'm sure the sail would have needed to be replaced by now (7 yrs old) if I hadn't done that so it was certainly a good investment.
Btw, wrt to raising the drum and inspecting the turnbuckle, that is much easier to do with the sail completely off too. Although I suppose you can do it with the sail on if you tie the furler halyard somewhere else (not on the drum) and then pull the lower part of the luff out of the track enough so that you can raise the drum at least a foot. Basically, you just pull the pin out and the furler will now lift up and ride the furler up. Be careful in that position if doing it with mast up because that thing always wants to fall back down and that can hurt if it gets your fingers while you are working on the turnbuckle. Sometimes its better to tie it to the bow pulpit in the up position so that you don't have to worry about that. Good luck.
When we bought the furler for our X..the dealer installed it for us while we were there....so we watched and thought we knew how to do it....our original jib was sent off to have the sunshade put along the edge.....a few years later we decided to use the jib instead of the genny....it was amazing how little we knew about replacing it....had we needed to get a torn sail down in bad weather and put up a new one we'd have had a lot of trouble...I know...with the 50 hp motor we should be able to power to a safer spot...but I always want to be prepared incase the motor doesnt start also...you know...the old "Murphy's Law" business.
Dimitri-2000X-Tampa wrote:Btw, wrt to raising the drum and inspecting the turnbuckle, that is much easier to do with the sail completely off too. Although I suppose you can do it with the sail on if you
- tie the furler halyard somewhere else (not on the drum) and
- then pull the lower part of the luff out of the track enough so that you can raise the drum at least a foot.
Basically, you just pull the pin out and the furler will now lift up and ride the furler up ...
IIRC, the luff on my non-factory Genoa ends about a foot above the drum. (Boat's at marina, can't look.) I'm pretty sure there's enough 'luff relief' to unpin the drum, slide it up and expose the turnbuckle ... no??
I don't know if my Genoa is factory or not (It is a Doyle sail but it does not have the "M" on it) but it ends right at the furler drum.
Dmitri,
Thanks for all the great advice. Now I know why I couldn't get my furler drum to rise up. The bottom of the sail was in the way AND I think that halyard is tied to the drum (Is there also a "downhaul" attached to the drum???).
I only have the genny so I don't have to do sail changes. And for the foreseealbe future I will live with that situation. If the winds pick up I will just roll in some of the genny. Not as "good" as a jib but it works okay for me. But I guess I will go ahead and take it apart just so that I know how to do it AND clean out that grime/gunk/etc.. that may be in the luff tape. I will look for a pool to use.
Thanks again to both of you for the words of wisdom.
Frank C wrote: ... the luff on my non-factory Genoa ends about a foot above the drum.
Sorry Jim - mis-wrote that. The following is academic for you, since you plan to do all of this on the ground. But just for clarity of terminology, the luff surely MUST extend from head to tack of the sail. What I meant was that the "luff tape" has some relief where it attaches the luff to the "plastic furler foil." That is, the luff tape is maybe a few inches short of reaching the sail's head, maybe 12" short of reaching the tack, leaving space to unpin the drum, and lift it to reveal the turnbuckle.
Yes, the tack must attach to the drum, using a short piece of cordage;
Yes, there's an internal halyard going over a pulley at top of foil, back down thru a second groove in the foil, also tied at the furler drum;
When performing sail changes on deck, you must tie a 25' messenger line to this internal halyard;
Thus, you can pull the sail down to deck (pulling internal halyard to top of the forestay);
Yet, still be able to hoist a new sail using the messenger line;
When re-rigging, stretching the sail's luff is important;
But it's difficult to get adequate leverage to really stretch the luff;
So, loop the cord several times through tack and drum padeye - gaining extra purchase.
in the next month or so and I have a question about removing the foresail.
