Block Wheel Blew Up! Need advice - pulley reefing system - :|

[solecollector]

I need some insight - want to know if I'm hosing things up or things are just breaking because they are old.

I had a 44' CSY for years and when we reefed the main you would lower the sail and place the ring on the hook. Had to go on deck which sometimes was hairy.... but most of the time it was a simple process.

Now I have a Lagoon 440 and it has this pretty cool pulley reefing system. It allows you to reef the main in the cockpit. But I have a few questions.

1. The first reef has a block on it both the sail luff and sail leech. So I bring the sail down with the main halyard a little past where the first reef point is at. Then I tighten the first reef down while still going down wind. The block on the luff (unsure if correct terminology for block point) touches the boom - it kind of gets crushed on it. I can't see any way around that...

2. I keep pulling the first reef down until the block on the leech end is a few feet above the boom. I hit the break on the line.

3. I raise the main to get things tight on the luff side.

I've done this probably 5 times with no problems. A few days back it was blowing in the low 20s. The manual says put the first reef in at 25 so we did it a little early. When we fell off - BOOM! Of course I did the super quick scan to see what broke this time- and I couldn't see anything obvious. I went up to the boom and looked at the block the first reef runs on the leech end and sure enough the wheel was gone - not even a piece left on deck... Just the metal rod was left....

So am I doing something wrong? Or was the block just old (6 years old with VERY little use and it was always under a sail cover)?

Thanks all for you insight!_steve

[donradcliffe]

Replace it with a bigger block.

[sailstoo]

The little wheel is called a "sheave". Get a bigger block (like donradcliffe said) with a bigger sheave. This time I'd go with Harken as they handle high stress apps well.