Missing something at the top of profurl furler

[RaymondR]

Originally Posted by Jim Cate

And BTW, we have replaced the forestay without disassembling the foils a number of times, including once on the lawn at the Aore Island resort in Vanuatu. IMO much easier than taking the thing apart!

Jim

One may be able to feed a bare wire through the Profurl foils which use the bearings illustrated and put Staylok fittings on the end however there is no way a roll form swage type end fittings will fit through those bearings.

[wsmurdoch]

Cut the fitting from one end of the old wire.
Swage a fitting to one end of the new wire.
Weld the wire ends together.
Grind the weld smooth
Pull the new wire into the furler.
Cut the new wire to length.
Swage on the remaining fitting.
Swage fittings can not be unscrewed by the furler.

[Jim Cate]

Swage fittings can not be unscrewed by the furler.

Has ANYONE heard of such a thing happening? I have not, and I've been paying attention to the use of mechanical terminals for around 40 years. However, I have heard of swages splitting, corroding internally and failing... more than once.

Jim

[Eric50]

Hi to all,

You probably have them already but, in order to help, you'll find the Profurl documentation for these furlers here :

https://www.profurl.com/fr/support-technique

and attached...

Hoping this wil help.

[RaymondR]

Originally Posted by wsmurdoch

Cut the fitting from one end of the old wire.
Swage a fitting to one end of the new wire.
Weld the wire ends together.
Grind the weld smooth
Pull the new wire into the furler.
Cut the new wire to length.
Swage on the remaining fitting.
Swage fittings can not be unscrewed by the furler.

Since,if all goes well, one is only likely to access the internals of the furler every ten years or so, so why not disassemble it and overhaul everything, including re-coating the grub screws to discourage corrosion and seizing in the threads, rather than implement the above?

[wsmurdoch]

Originally Posted by Jim Cate

Has ANYONE heard of such a thing happening? I have not, and I've been paying attention to the use of mechanical terminals for around 40 years. However, I have heard of swages splitting, corroding internally and failing... more than once.

Jim

In October 2014 I had the forestay on my Pacific Seacraft 34 replaced at Sailcraft Services in Oriental, NC. (They had previously replaced all the wire rigging on the boat.) The old forestay had a swaged fitting at its top and a Norseman fitting at the bottom. A Profurl roller furling unit rides on the forestay. Alan Arnfast, the yard owner, suggested that I install a swaged fitting at the bottom of the forestay instead of the Norseman fitting. He had seen five dismastings from forestay failures in the previous year, and two were apparently caused by a mechanical end fitting being unscrewed by the roller furling.

I found a collaborating report on-line at https://theriggingco.com/2016/11/14/...ical-or-swage/ which says:

"Mechanical (or swageless) fittings are not without their problems either. ... a furler where the mechanical eye fitting at the top of the stay, came unscrewed by the spinning action of the furler. ...

We, at TRC, recommend using swage fittings over mechanical fittings when the stay is rigged with a furler, i.e. forestay."

I have also heard of another case (which I can not document) where the foil of a ProFurl furler dropped down onto the top of the lower mechanical fitting and unscrewed it. That fitting in hidden within the furler and was not visible for inspection.

[Jim Cate]

^^^^

Interesting, and thanks for the information. Still seems a statistically safe thing to do, especially if one is going to remote areas where swaging service is unlikely.

Cheers,

Jim

[Nicholson58]

Originally Posted by chrisr

looks like the top bearing might be there...although badly worn. it's inside the extrusion

assume the headsail is down and the top swivel (attached to the headsail) is in order

however the wrapstopper is missing. fairly important piece of kit...

i'd talk to your friendly local rigger. at noosa this is colin quinn (good bloke) 0418 832 615

cheers,

I believe this is correct.

You can easily find the Pro Furl data sheets, parts lists and parts on line. Their cection drawings and assembly drawings show exactly what you need.

You may still need a rugged to do the work.

[wingssail]

Originally Posted by Jim Cate

I guess we just have different outlooks, Ray!

And BTW, we have replaced the forestay without disassembling the foils a number of times, including once on the lawn at the Aore Island resort in Vanuatu. IMO much easier than taking the thing apart!

Jim

The best place to work on the rig is under the coconut palms on the lawn in front of the Yacht Club, anywhere.

[Jim Cate]

Originally Posted by wingssail

The best place to work on the rig is under the coconut palms on the lawn in front of the Yacht Club, anywhere.

Mebbe true, Fred, but it is hundreds of miles from Aore Island to the nearest YC (or at least this was the case when our incident arose, circa 1998 IIRC). We kinda enjoyed interacting with the guests whilst making the repair!

Jim

[wingssail]

Originally Posted by Jim Cate

Mebbe true, Fred, but it is hundreds of miles from Aore Island to the nearest YC (or at least this was the case when our incident arose, circa 1998 IIRC). We kinda enjoyed interacting with the guests whilst making the repair!

Jim

Ah yes, Port Vila is 160 miles away, but there is a yacht club (sort of) at Maewo, 60 miles away. I know because I helped build it. But not in 1998.

We stayed at Aore on late Oct 2002. Injured my back packing jerry cans of fuel from Luganville gas station back to the dingy to transport to the big boat at Aore. Still hurts. There were Scorpion fish around the dock at Aore.

Did you dive at Million Dollar Point?

[OneBoatman]

If your boat is over 30 ft this might be better left to the yard folks. Is your top swivel assy missing or just not in the picture? If you have it, it clearly needs to be re-built. For the DIY, first rig one halyard to act as a temporary head stay. Then take tension off the back stay and tack turnbuckle so that your "climber" will be able to unpin the top of the headstay once you are ready to lower it for service. Caution: The foil and head stay assy is heavier than you think and a bit unwieldy. You do not want to bend the foil sections. I have supported same using a spare halyard and tying a rolling hitch about 2/3 of the way up the foil. If the swivel assy is completed missing which seems quite odd you will need to fasten a lift support line near the top of the head stay itself in order to take the weight off enough to unpin the head. The halyard line you tied around the foil will be used to support the headstay/foil assy as you lower it for service. Bring you climber down and install new bearings in the swivel assy. Attached the jib halyard to swivel as normal and tie a second short penant to the top of the swivel assy giving it tail to the climber so that once they are up they have somethin in place to control and guide the eye in order to re-pin the head. The climbe should also attach a temporary downhall to the upper swivel and take it with them in order to insure the swivel will drop down for you in order to rebend your sail. Remove any support penants and the climber is done. Next re-pin the tack end or the head stay, you will no doubt need to rig a temporary purchase to take the sag out of the head stay in order to re-pin it. Re-tension the backstay and headstay and put you your jib back on. Done

[RaymondR]

After experiencing a head stay failure which I attributed to excessive flexing of the wire where it entered the terminal fitting I removed the upper bearings and extended the two bars on the bottom of the furler so that the upper bearing holder enclosed the roll formed section of the terminal fitting so that the wire could no longer be flexed if the sail flogged. I also removed the lower bearing to also minimize hard flexing of the wire where it entered the lower terminal fitting. I then never experienced another failure.

[CdS2 Roland]

Hello,
Yes there is missing the plastic top end of the tube.
It probably fall apart. Don't know which type you have, but they all look like in the attachment Pdf.

[alistair]

If you mean the gap between the wire fore-stay and the furler tube section, then yes the top shell bearing is missing, so you do need to buy one and it will tap down into place. However if you refer to the upper part of the furler- the bearing unit to which the sail and halyard is connected to, then that would be an astounding part to simply go missing? The furling system cannot function without the lower drum and the upper bearing. There is plenty of on-line info about all of this.