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The drum on the furlers will only only hold so much line. It is a trade off, the smaller the line size the more it holds but then your hands will not like it much.
The boat I was on last summer that this happened to was using a Harken furler and the drum was full of fairly small line.
We went from 12 knots to 35 knots of wind rather quickly but we could clearly see it coming. The skipper asked us to furl the head sail which was a brand new D4 kevlar on a 35 foot boat. Very expensive. It furled up so tight that we had almost half the sail still out and were out of furling line.
We were fine but I was not too happy about the sail so I insisted that we roll it back out and drop it. Something that we should have done before it hit.
That was in one of the Mac races. I told him I would be happy to do it again next year but we are getting rid of the furler.
There are a number of newer boats that are designed to only use a 100% jib with a furler. They have a larger main and this set up makes more sense to me.
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