Hanking onto roller furling, Lewmar 30 winch, removing RF... HELP!!!

[tafelice]

Hi group,

Just bought a boat with a bad (unusable) RF jib, 150%.  Can a hank on jib be jury rigged to work on the extrusion, say with loops or a twisted wire?  This is a temporary set up as I must move this boat.  Plan to be on the ICW with this rig but wanted it to be functional so that I would have the option of sailing if I had to or wanted to in the sailable areas of the ditch.  The yard I'm at does not have the knowledge or the desire to remove the furling rig (fishing boat yard) and the hex set screw is stripped and it is cold and I need to leave.  Any suggestions?  Also, if anyone is familiar with a 1983 Hood brand roller furling and can tell me how to remove it, with confidence, that would help as well.  I don't believe the forestay is swaged as it would take up too much room but I can't move the drum to see.  While we are in 1983, anyone know how to remove the top cap from a Lewmar 30 self tailing winch (it works but probably needs to be serviced).  The previous owner spray painted it and I can't see the cap line boundaries, even after some scraping.  A blow up I received elsewhere showed it screwed off but it also showed the top cap with a dimple for assisting removal but this one doesn't have it.  Saving grace the Yanmar 2GM works great, might be motoring home.

Thanks in advance,

Tom

[CapnK]

Hi Tom -

Connie and I came up with this idea as a workaround for running a storm jib up over her furled genny:

Get some 1x19 wire, cut into short lengths, as many pieces as you will need to be able to attach the sail hanks.

Make the wire sections long enough to go around your furler, remembering that you need enough length to put thimbles on each end.

Get some heavy duty vinyl tubing from the hardware store, as small as possible but large enough to squeeze the thimbles through, with the ends of the thimbles barely protruding (avoiding chafe). Put tubing on the wire pieces.

Shackle thimbles of wire pieces together around the furler, and attach hanks onto the shackles.

It'll be sloppy, but should work.

Glad to here that the engine is working well, and hope that everything else is going OK. Give me a call if you are stopping in at G-town on your way by. :)

[s/v Faith]

I am sure Kurt's idea works better, but....

  when I blew out my headsail I rigged up an old hank on head sail that I used for a couple months.  I even raced on it a couple times.

  I just used a bunch of short pieces of line, and tied loops that I attached the hanks to.  The shape was not perfect, but with proper halyard tension it was useable.

WRT the hood furler... just helped a guy remove one from a perason 30.  (actually a North Sails brand furler, but I understand it to be a re-branded hood).

  It was pretty streight forward, but the head stay had to be dropped (used jib halyard for temp forestay).  I doubt there is any other way to drop it, and FWIW the set screws were frozen on that one too....)

  Good luck on your trip.  I don't like to move boats I can't sail either.....

[AdriftAtSea]

Hi group,

Just bought a boat with a bad (unusable) RF jib, 150%.  Can a hank on jib be jury rigged to work on the extrusion, say with loops or a twisted wire?  This is a temporary set up as I must move this boat.  Plan to be on the ICW with this rig but wanted it to be functional so that I would have the option of sailing if I had to or wanted to in the sailable areas of the ditch.  The yard I'm at does not have the knowledge or the desire to remove the furling rig (fishing boat yard) and the hex set screw is stripped and it is cold and I need to leave.  Any suggestions?  Also, if anyone is familiar with a 1983 Hood brand roller furling and can tell me how to remove it, with confidence, that would help as well.  I don't believe the forestay is swaged as it would take up too much room but I can't move the drum to see.  While we are in 1983, anyone know how to remove the top cap from a Lewmar 30 self tailing winch (it works but probably needs to be serviced).  The previous owner spray painted it and I can't see the cap line boundaries, even after some scraping.  A blow up I received elsewhere showed it screwed off but it also showed the top cap with a dimple for assisting removal but this one doesn't have it.  Saving grace the Yanmar 2GM works great, might be motoring home.

Thanks in advance,

Tom

Taking the furling unit down wil require at least disconnecting the the headstay.  I would use a long strip piece of sailcloth, about as long as the luff of the sail and two feet or so wide—fold it over and sew it so that the middle portion over the foil is three layers thick, and then add grommets to it at the points you need to use the hanks.  This will spread the load out better than the 1x19 or rope will, and probably is less likely to damage the foil.

BTW, this is a piece of gear I have used on a friend's boat...and she carries it as standard gear, so that she can fit a storm jib over her furling headsail, similar to how a ATN GaleSail fits. The cloth should be wider if you're going to use it over a furled headsail.

You may need to use paint stripper to get rid of the paint, before you can remove the cap on the winch.  If that doesn't work, you may have to drill two small holes and use them as anchor points for a spanner to remove the cap.   IIRC from my Lewmar 40ST winches, there are actually two dimples, since the piece is symmetrical.  You should be able to make a tool that can fit the two dimples out of a piece of bar stock. 

[tafelice]

Great ideas all.  So essentially the force on the sail will not damage the extrusion.  Correct.  What if instead of vinyl tubing using small pieces of PVC to act like rolling beads on the extrusion with the wire running through it?

Okay, WRT the RF I figured the head stay would have to come off but I figured it would be temporary while the drum and extrusion was slid off.  But am I to assume the head stay is removed at the lower connection only?  And if so, doesn't that set screw have to be EZ OUT?  What happens next, assuming I get that large nut (the one the set screw is setting) off, does the stay lock need to be removed or does that gear go over it.   OR did you have to scrap the old forestay and put on a new one? 

I don't understand about the winch enough to ask an intelligent question.  I'm going to hit it with PB Blaster and wait till I meet someone who can disassemble the dang thing.

Kurt,  I will definitely be passing Gtown but not sure if I'm stopping or hanging out. 

Later,

Tom

[AdriftAtSea]

The more evenly you can spread the pressure along the extrusion, the lower the chances of damaging it.  That's why I like my friend's sleeve idea... 

Don't hit the winch with PBBlaster until you have a plan for disassembling it.  If you get enough PBBlaster in the winch to loosen up the action, you probably also put enough in to wash whatever grease was left in the bearings... and you really don't want to use a winch that doesn't have well-greased bearings.

If it isn't sticking, leave it alone until you have help to disassemble it.

[tafelice]

Hi All,

I think the fastest and easiest for me is a suggestion I got re getting a long cable and attaching one end, with the sail head to the halyard then wrap the cable about the extru and attach the first hank, wrap the cable attach second hank and so on.  Since I hope to find help getting the RF off the stay ASAP I don't want to go through the trouble of all the other great suggestions.  I bought a sail today from Atlantic Sails.  And, they applied the first coat of bottom paint today.  Big day in the looking-like-we're-getting-somewhere department.

[tafelice]

I first asked this question and now that my journey is done I'll reveal what I tried and what worked and what didn't and why.  First the sleeve idea was too permanent a fix.  I wanted a short term solution.  I tried the single line wrapped around the foil and I would strongly recommend against this.  Although the sail did work in this configuration 1) it was really difficult to initiate... starting, wrapping, hanking, wrapping, hanking, making sure the line didn't get away from you, keeping the line untangled etc. Also, you really couldn't wrap at every hank because it would bind on the foil, I had to wrap after every third.  this worked best.  2) once up it did sail BUT it was considerably far away from the foil.  Big space between the luff and foil that is. AND 3) the worst part, taking it down.  While I didn't have a problem taking it down, meaning it didn't hang, it was a MESSSS when it was on deck.  This might make an okay ONE TIME solution to jury rigging a sail to a foil but that is it, one time.

Now what did work was something like the suggestions of making the loops of the cable and tubing or hose etc.  But I didn't go to that much trouble and expense.  What I did was to cut some good low stretch line (an old outhaul line from my laser days) to fixed lengths (for uniformity) I'm guessing it was about 20" to 24", just guessing, it was to my third cup holder on the salon table :) .  Then I made a double loop and using a sheetbend (two opposing overhand knots) I bent it on to itself.  Did this on the foil BTW.  This produced a rope loop about 2+" long.  These lay in a heap at my rf drum.  When I wanted to fly the jib I hanked onto these.  They went up without a problem and came down just as well.  It also flew the sail well two.  I know a lot of people made a fuss about there being equal pressure on the sail but I don't know what tolerances they were suggesting.  I guess my loops were within an 1/8" (maybe at most 1/4") of each other.  For some reason I was always looking for signs of uneven pressure but could never see any and thought the sail drove really well.  After using this system for about 5 weeks on my trip back I couldn't see any significant wear in my line loops and I believe they will hold up until I rig a permanent solution to my forestay.

Thanks to everyone for there suggestions.

Tom

[tafelice]

Also, with re to removing the cap for the Lewmar 30 self tailing winch the correct answer is............... tap the tailer with a  block of wood hit with a hammer in a counter clockwise direction and the top part will then screw off for maintenance.