Best Roller Furler ?

[adjo]

I can highly recommend Almasts Reefit gear http://www.almasts.com.au/
Strong, reliable and reasonably priced.

[Sailmonkey]

We’ve had a Schaefer on our boat for longer than we’ve owned the boat. The only things I’ve done to it were to replace the Deleon sleeve that the head swivel slides on. The bearings are all original and still spin easily.
I do take the drum section apart when I’m feeling like it and lube the screws so it can be taken apart when I need to.

[patprice]

Yep thumbs up to the Tasmanian Reefit furlers. I have two on my cutter. Have done some 30,000 sometimes windy miles. Zero problems.
PS I never use a winch to reduce sail, my cutter is 36 feet.

[JON REISWIG]

I have Profurl past 20 yrs. never have touched it no upkeep. main sailing in SE Alaska & inside passage to Seattle. boat stored in water here in Ak. exposed to weather all those yrs. Jon Reiswig SV Shannon Taj

[Tia Bu]

We installed an Alado (Brazilian) furler earlier this year. Easy to install. Very well built. Heavy-duty.


It's a bit more difficult to furl in heavy wind than the old Profurl, and occasionally, in a blow, I have to throw a couple of wraps of the furler line on a spare winch. But works very well. It does not use one of the boat's halyards, so there's less concern about halyard wrap. And simple design makes fewer thing to break. The foil design is quite sturdy and simple.



Affordable. Would recommend.

[geoff3nebel]

Schaefer 3100 without a moment’s hesitation. Reliable, strong and hasn’t let me down in 15 years so far. I sail a heavy-ish (13 tonnes cruising weight) 41’6” monohull Westerly Oceanlord in the North Atlantic

[Idylles15.5]

Thanks for the input. I never heard of Almasts before. I went on the website, and I have to say it looks really similar to the Schaefer 3100. I'm on Long Island and Schaefer is located in New Bedford Mass. so that may be cheaper then shipping a unit from Australia. I will contact Almast Monday and find out a cost plus shipping. I like the worldwide 10 year warranty. Plus who knows where the hell I'll be if something breaks, Polynesia, etc. Funny thing is my last name is Schlaefer lol. I was surprised no Furlex, Selden or Fancor comments, maybe there is a reason for that huh?

[Idylles15.5]

My apologies to Dockhead, he did mention Furlex and Seldon.

[Idylles15.5]

Selden

[newboat]

This is a good topic-I run a boatyard and am a lifelong offshore sailor- I think the comments made are accurate-lots of good furlers on the market and of course lots of people will have had good or bad experiences with them all - Harken, Furlex, Profurl, Facnor etc. But the question was, what is the best and most heavy duty - I am not familiar with the Ozzie and Kiwi specific units but will look into them-not sure how easy they’d be to get in the US, but my opinion is that the Schaeffer units are very heavy duty and Reckmann from Germany is also super high quality. I am actually about to buy a new unit myself for my 38 footer and am deciding between the two as “the best”. I have personal experience with both and while the Reckmann makes the Schaeffer look cheap, I am leaning that way. Any other thoughts with personal experience? Thanks Idylle for bringing this up

[AiniA]

Put 40,000 nm offshore on a Schaefer 3100 with no problems at all. This is not to say that others are not as good or even better. No one has extensive experience with multiple furlers. I checked out the Reef Rite and it was an impressive heavy duty unit with some nice features but at the time it was hard to get one in North America.

[rocco lombardi]

Harken mk4, by FAR! Independant tack swivel. Super hardcote anodize. Self- lubricating, cheap to replace Torlon balls. Aero foils assemble with fasteners and adheisive. I am a sailboat rigger 22yrs., and have MANY satisified customers. Also have one on MY boat! 6K sea miles with no problems.

[Don C L]

Jim, didn't you have Reef-Rite before? Curious why the switch to Almast.

[Jim Cate]

Originally Posted by Don C L

Jim, didn't you have Reef-Rite before? Curious why the switch to Almast.

Don, that was on our previous boat, and we really liked it. Then it went with the mast to the bottom of the Tasman sea. When we were refitting after that sad incident here in Oz the imported price of the Reef-rite had skyrocketed. The spar builder that did our new mast offered to sell us a Schaeffer (sp?) at cost and we went with that. Quite a nice unit, but now quite pricey here. That same unit is still in service on her, age 24 years.

Our current boat came to us with an elderly Furlex model C, and earlier this year it finally failed catastrophically. We replaced it with the Almast after some research. Happy so far, but not so many miles yet.

We put a Facnor on the Solent a few years back, and not so happy with it. Very easy to install DIY, though, and relatively inexpensive.

Jim

[TabbyCat]

Originally Posted by Idylles15.5

I like the Schaefer 3100, but oooffaaa expensive.

My boat came new with a Schaeffer 3100. It's 15 years old and has over 50,000 NM and some very heavy weather passages on it. Had to have the set screws in the foil re-drilled a few years back. It's now finally time to replace it, so I might just replace with the same for the next 50k