Bavaria 41 Mainsail Furling Problems

[Heracles]

Hi there,

On our 1999 Bavaria 41 we have recently been having problems with the mainsail furling gear, has anybody experienced similar issues?

The main was becoming difficult to extract from the mast and then snagging on the way in too. Eventually the furling winch at the base of the mast gave up the ghost and became disconnected from the sail furling mechanism (apologies for lack of technical terms here, but you know what I mean).

Anyway we had to drop the sail and reef it to the boom temporarily when it wouldn't stow away the last time. Waiting for an engineer to come and diagnose the problem, but we were wondering if any other owners have had anything similar happen.

Yes the sail is 15 years old and we will replace that now, although the yacht has only seen 4 charter seasons in Greece during her lifetime.

Still it wasn't all technical problems during our most recent week sailing as you can see from our little movie on YouTube - link below. We actually had plenty of wind as the Meltemi was blowing that week in the southern Aegean and now we have plenty of respect for this Meteorolgical phenomenon.

 http://youtu.be/Hp84zNN20Ro

Cheers, James McBride.
Charlotte Too.
 

[tiger79]

The furling mechanism requires regular servicing if it's to work properly and reliably.  The Selden manual gives detailed instructions.

[Heracles]

Thanks Tiger,

Good advice I think, but also from research one of the biggest problems seems to be old sails. We will solve that one, but I was wondering whether anyone else was experiencing similar issues.

Having trawled the forum, it seems not.

Blues Skies and Fair Winds, James.

[Anthony]

Obviously in-mast furling... a horrid idea... but the sail must be as flat as possible because a stretched baggy sail simply will not roll up.

[Lazy Pelican]

If you have bend in the mast this stops the furling mechanism working properly. Always let off the back stay before you deploy/ furl the sail.

John