Jump to content

Alan and Paul's secret weapon for the Everglades Challengec


Designer

Recommended Posts

Well, it did not make Dawn Patrol any faster, they already had the spinnaker but the top down furler certainly made spinnaker hoisting and dousing quick and easy so that they could use it even on short legs where they might not normally feel that it would be worth the effort or use it in more marginal conditions knowing that they could easily get rid of it.

 

I have been lusting for a top down furler for a long time as I usually sail Carlita solo or with my dog. Mandy does not seem to care about that pretty red, white and blue asymmetric spinnaker. It was the price tag of around $1000.00 that discouraged me. They have been in use for large short handed boats for some time now but it appears that manufacture's cannot be bothered with those of us who sail small boats. 

 

I started to design one for myself. As I delved into how I was going to make double concentric ball races it occurred to me that I could just make a swivel and insert it into Ronstan's bottom up 60 series furler. I showed the drawing to Alan and said that I would make one for him for the EC, he just happened to have an R60 on Mosquito. We ordered up some torlon balls and I got to work on the lathe.

 

What makes the top down furler different is that the furling drum does not connect to the tack of the sail. The drum is connected to a torque line that turns the top swivel so the top of the sail winds up first and starts removing that extra cloth from the middle of the sail before the foot of the sail starts to wind up. . The tack is attached to the second swivel which makes it independent of the furling drum.

 

Bottom up furlers work okay for relatively flat cut sails but top down works better for spinnakers.

 

The first picture shows our shop built swivel waiting for the torlon balls to arrive. I got lucky as we tried a spare length of dacron braid that just happened to be twice the length of the hoist. We tied it as a double line and it seemed to be about right.  The shackle showed that it might foul or at least chafe on the sail as it rotated. I rounded out the shackle hole to reduce chafe and replaced the shackle for multiple wraps with a light lashing and eliminated the problem.

 

Drum furlers won't work because they cannot hold enough line. You need the endless line that just has a single turn around the drum giving unlimited turns. They are also less sensitive to line alignment which allows the drum to out-hauled to the end of the bowsprit or in-hauled as needed.

 

Here is the email that Alan sent the first night of the EC.  spinnaker flying all day furler works like a dream. 14knots recorded. heard a sea pearl capsized have no more details. having fun. Boat feels old hat at this.

swivel.jpg

swivel3.jpg

swivel 5.jpg

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites


Hi Matt

 

You are right, it is a lot of stuff.

 

Wind pressure goes up or down by the square with wind speed. For instance if 16 knots of wind is perfect, then you are only getting 1/4 of wind force at 8 knots. If you can add more sail in light air it can add a lot your performance.

 

When the wind gets lighter still, say 4 knots you are only getting 1/16 of the wind force. Sometimes the boat just feels stuck, what is happening is that the sails are stalled and it is hard to feel what is going on. Adding more sail can sometimes get you out of this stalled situation and move the apparent wind forward and get you moving really well. It can sometimes mean the difference between not moving at all to coaching 3- 4 knots out of the boat instead of being stopped.

 

To answer your question, the spinnaker is bigger and has more effect over a staysail. The staysail has less stuff to get and is all inboard. It just depends on what you want to achieve. When the wind is way forward, the spinnaker will give you some lee helm. You can lower the board all of the way which helps. This is not a problem in light air but is can get heavy in strong winds. When this happens you can bear away and solve the problem but if you have to sail that course, then it is time to furl it up.

 

I have never tried to fly both at the same time, feeling that the staysail might rob more from the main and mizzen than it gives and just concentrate on making the spinnaker work as efficiently as I can.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Graham, would you get the same effect by shackling the tack of the spinnaker or gennaker to a separate point close aft of the R60 (but clear above the furling line) so the torsion line still operates separate from the lower end of the luff, thus avoiding the need for the swivel?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Interesting solution Graham. I played with making something similar a few years ago, but went with a split ring (instead of captive ball) arrangement. It's funny how we approuch things. I was working through this on my old 35' CCA Lion Class, converted to yawl. I need a better way to hoist, douse and furl the mizzen mule, which was a sail I liked to use fairly frequently. I had a couple of different staysails and wanted a relatively cheap way to have everything attached, so I could hoist from a cockpit locker, dog down and runout pretty quickly. 

 

The drums I found commercially were either too big, quite costly or had too much diameter to be effective on the smaller sails I was using. Initially, I tried what I saw in a Karver bottoms up setup, but didn't like the lack of furling line exit adjustment. Eventually I made a drum that worked pretty well, once I got the friction thing worked out and a Ronstan 60 series swivel, for their code zero/drifter setup.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Drew,

I had the same question. Unfortunately that would only work to furl the sail in about half way and then it would bind up. Once the top half of the sail starts to wind onto the torsion line then the whole thing goes and the tack starts wrapping up as well. We found the best was to just keep winding and all the spinnaker sheets were taken up (wrapped around the sail) and all out of the way. 

 

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

We found the sail very easy to handle. For single handing the continuous line could be run all the way to the stern of the boat even. The top swivel we were using was a bit sticky and the whole arrangement meant that in lighter winds we had to positively "unfurl" the sail when we wanted it out. It would unfurl about half way but then to get the last twists out of the top we would have to pull the furling line the other way to take some torsion out of the taught line. 

 

The best part about it was that it furls with no hassle in strong winds. Because of this we used the spinnaker much more than any other year because it was so accessible and I know it made us faster. With this asymmetrical spinnaker we can sail about 30 deg. off the wind and gybe downwind when downwind is our goal. Deeper than that and the sail doesn't get enough clear air. We carried the sail up to about 15 knots and then switched to wing and wing. If I had to guess, in 15 knots of breeze we maybe gain about 1/2 a knot of vmg by gybing downwind with the spinnaker versus sailing dead down wind wing and wing. In 10 knots of wind it might be closer to a knot faster vmg with the spinnaker. 

 

We left the sail up, furled almost the entire time in the EC this year only taking it down when we had to paddle hard into the wind to get out of a narrow pass at the checkpoint and didn't want the extra windage. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Very cool Graham! Looks like your swivel works incredibly well. I've lately been installing hardware to the masts for Deluge. Could you send me a dwg or description of hardware and location for the running back stay and spinnaker? The drawings I've got only include the halyard block and cleat for the staysail.

Thanks!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Fred,

 

I will work on it. I am also updating the dodger plans for you.

 

I have been working on being able to produce the adapter swivel at an affordable price. I am planning on being able to CNC cut the swivel body from UHMW plastic. I have built a cutter for machining the races and will make up a new swivel and give it a good testing.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 11 months later...

Hi Graham,

 

I'm digging up some old threads here because I'm interested in adding some sail area to SB for light wind days and I see on the B&B web site there are some extra sails listed for the CS17mk3.  Are the listed prices for the sails only or do they include any bits of hardware?

 

And I can see that the Mizzen Staysail is most certainly easier to install and rig but if one has your furling asym spinnaker mod, is there any reason to also have the Staysail?  Like are there any points of sail that the staysail will be better than the spinnaker on?  Like can you point higher with it versus the spin?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

It is a good idea to add extra sail area for those light weather days.

 

You can either run the staysail or the spinnaker. There is just not enough room for 4 sails on the boat for all of them to set well at the same time and have a nice slot between them so that they can all draw efficiently.

 

The staysail is a docile easily handled sail that will boost your speed nicely. It is easy to hoist and retrieve. It can be used on a close reach to a broad reach. It can be set with the the working sails wing and wing on a fairly broad reach but not straight down wind because the sails start to blanket each other.  Tacking down wind in a narrow channel is annoying because the staysail has to be removed for the main to gybe. 

 

I have never used the staysail on Carlita because I have the spinnaker and being bigger I will opt for it making the staysail redundant for me. I have experimented a flat cut sail like a jib and a radial tri cut spinnaker. Naturally the flat cut will allow you to carry it closer to the wind but you cannot carry it close enough for windward work. Because it is hard to change spinnakers under way especially solo I typically opt for the spinnaker giving up being able to sail as high with it. It is a lot larger which means that I will have to furl it up sooner than I would with the smaller sail so everything is a compromise.

 

The prices are for the sails only. 

  • Like 1
  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for the great info Graham.  I can see how once you have the furling spinnaker, its not so attractive to use the staysail cause maybe both will point about the same anyway (which is not as good as the working sails if you are beating upwind).  Is the sail area about 2.4 times larger for the spin over the staysail (the price ratio:) out of curiosity?

 

As you say, you may be able to deploy the staysail in higher winds than the spinnaker with sail size difference and lee helm you mentioned earlier so maybe it makes more sense to start with the less complicated sail since I'm not sure I'm ready to take on the job of adding bow sprit and running backstays yet anyways. I presume the staysail just needs a second halyard on the mizzen?  Or is there additional hardware also needed for the sheets?

 

One of the big advantages of this boat over my other ones is the unstayed masts on tabernacles so running a temporary backstay to a cleat is one thing, but permanently adding stays decreases the attractive simplicity too albeit a very slick setup with that snubbing furler.  It would be helpful if there are any pics available either of the rigging and/or flying of the staysail, I can email if that is easier.

 

Dimitri

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 months later...
On 3/18/2018 at 2:17 PM, Designer said:

 

 

I have been working on being able to produce the adapter swivel at an affordable price. I am planning on being able to CNC cut the swivel body from UHMW plastic. I have built a cutter for machining the races and will make up a new swivel and give it a good testing.

 

Graham

 

I am thinking about adding a furler to make it easier to deploy and retrieve my spinnaker.  I have looked around and the top down furlers available are for larger boats. The Ronstan 60 series furler goes for around  $300. but it needs an adapter swivel to make it top down.

Are you still pleased with your modified Ronstan 60 furler.  Did your adapter go into production?

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hi Joe,

 

I like it. It is still a work in progress. I am happy with the deign but I have not solved the production procedures. I am now making the body out of Uhmw plastic which we can cnc cut. I made up a cutter to machine the scores for the bearings. That all works okay, the issue is the stainless steel center. Our lathe is old and it takes a lot of time to make to the precision that I want. We do not have a mill so I have to grind the flats by eye and drill the shackle holes. Maybe if I switch the center to bronze it would be easier to make and accept that it will tarnish. If we could find a machine shop that could crank out a few at a reasonable price would be good.

 

Alan used Carlita's swivel in the EC and it held up well. Work has got in the way of play and I have not used on Carlita this year.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for the update Graham.  I put the photo of the swivel on my phone. I could check around here to see if I could find someone who could machine them.  Is it just the core that we need?  Is that 2 1/2 or 3 inches long? What size are the bearings? How many would you want? Probably would be massively expensive but it won't hurt to ask around.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The main problem we had with this year in the EC on Southern Skimmer was with the torque line. We were just using a twisted pair of 3/8" double braid line to transmit the torque to the top of the luff the problems come with furling in higher winds it takes a lot of torque to get the sail to start wrapping and then when the sail is half furled the torque required is much less so a lot of twists are built up in the torque line and then they are relieved inside the rolled up sail which causes a bunch of wraps in the wrong direction at the top so then when you go to unfurl it gets all fouled at the top until you can shake the twists out. Part of the problem is that the free standing mast can't generate as much tension in the torque line as a stayed rig can so the torque line is never really super taught even with the backstays full on. So if the torque line doesn't have enough tension it can more easily twist leading to the above scenario or even worse it could pigtail. I don't know what it would cost to have a piece of proper top down furling torque line made up for the boat but I think it might be worth it. They make fancy braided and wrapped torque line exactly for this.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Alan,

The torsion rope I have looked at is expensive and heavy 9mm. The Ronstan 80 series has an optional lashing pin at the top swivel. To increase torque I presume you run the paired line to the outside?  The series 80 lashing pin won't fit series 60 top swivel. Perhaps a lashing pin could be improvised.  After rereading your post I see you are using a paired 3/8 inch line. It is difficult to argue that a single 9mm line is heavier. 

 

 

 

 

image.thumb.png.74e68e312986708fb1243aac4d9678d1.png

Edited by Joe Anderson
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...


×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.