Main sail roller furling

[lunasee]

Hi
Met a man with a Down Easter the other day that had what looked like jib roller furler running down the aft side of his mast for his main sail.
After yakking for a while we rolled the main out and in a few times to check it out. He just brought the boat and had no experience with the rig.
Other than loosing some sail area do to no roach (no battens) I saw a lot of advantages.
Easy sail handling and reefing for one.
I have only seen this set up on two or three boats. It seems like an ideal rig for a cruising boat with a couple of old farts for crew.
Has anyone any experience with this system?
Dan R

[Velella99]

There was a large ketch in our marina that had that system on both its masts. I was able to talk to the owner considerably about the systems and came to like them. He had sailed extensively through the Pacific with them. The two main issues I saw positive and negative were
Positive: the system reefed very easily and because that filled life is external to the mast there was never any concern around jamming inside the spar. He had a crank handle type system that turned the luff cable to furl. Of course if there was any issue with the furling system he could simply drop the whole lot using the halyard.
Negative : this was a retrofit office a standard mast and he had to fit a new boom and crown for his mast. He did say that he thought the furled main and the mast provided a fair bit of windage. He was also having trouble tightening the luff line enough. However he did think this might of been a matter of the sail more than the system as he has a cable bolt roped into the main - was not luff pocketed. It was actually pretensioned or something like that.
I must admit to being perplexed as to why this system would be chosen vs a standard slug and slide luff system of a normal sail unless you specifically wanted a furling main and did not want the risk of a jammed main in the mast. (in that case I'd be looking at a sail furling into the boom as preference! In fact to reveal my personal feelings about it I've never really understood why in-mast furling is not more popular than in-boom furling)

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