SAIL.SailMagazine

Many furling gear problems can be traced to one simple cause

By Peter Nielsen

The last thing you want from your furling gear is for it to jam up in a rising breeze – or at any other time, come to that. I must be some kind of roller-reefing Jonah, because it’s happened a few times on boats I’ve been sailing aboard. On two of those occasions, halyard wrap was to blame.

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"The 20-horsepower Yanmar in my Orion 27 has low hours, but last summer it began to stop about a minute after it started. When I tried a restart, it was clear to me that it was being starved for fuel. I bled the fuel line, and, when I saw air bubbles coming out at the secondary filter, I thought I’d fixed the problem. But when I let the engine sit unused for a couple of days, the start/stop
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"I’m about to install an antenna farm on the horizontal arch behind my boat’s cockpit and am wondering whether the antennas need to be placed on the arch in a particular way. Are there guidelines for proper antenna location?"

-- Dave Richardson , Winnetka, Illinois

Gordon West replies: You should do several things. First, if possible mount the radar antenna

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"Many experts recommend that cruisers carry extra shrouds and stays. To save space, I’m thinking about carrying Spectra line as a backup. Does the idea have any merit?"

 

-- Kim Barr , San Francisco, California

Win Fowler replies: In theory, Spectra or Dyneema line—both are high-modulus polyethylene—will work fine as standing rigging in terms of breaking

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By Peter Nielsen

Many drivers develop a kind of mechanical sympathy—they learn to recognize the sounds an engine makes when it’s being over-revved or is in too high a gear for the speed. The ability to empathize with sails is not so easily acquired, which is one reason why sailmakers will never be short of repair business.

Step one is to keep the sails from flogging. Flogging

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