Well at least you didn't make it worse and have to call a rigger. In our case I'm 99% certain the problem was my spinniker halyard. I copied another C36 on our dock by attaching it to the bow pulpit in front of the
furler. When I did it, I had the thought that it didn't look like much clearance at the top, but it sure would be convienient and if it worked on another boat, it should be fine on mine, right?
Well it was for a while, but I suspect some of our guest crew may have accidently released the clutch while attempting to adjust the
jib halyard tension, allowing some slack in the
line. That allowed the spin halyard to get caught in the top swivel which of course happened in the dark.
My major mistake was not taking a minute or three to think through the issue, so I resorted to brute force which is a bad idea on boats and airplanes. Winching the
furler twisted the
shackle attachment point on the upper swiviel to jam where it wouldn't budge up or down. Fortuately, I did think before resorting to step 2, which is, if force doesn't work, apply more force. That probably saved me having to buy a new extrusion and or upper swivel. As it was, it was only a couple of hours labor for the rigger to remove and replace the attachment strap and put the sail back up.
The big learning point here is you can manually furl (or unfurl) the sail if the roller isn't acting like it should. Just bring the sheets forward and get the thing wrapped up and strap it with some sailties if you have to, then worry about getting the foul cleared when its safe and everything is under control.
BTW, I've gone back to securing the spin halyard to a shroud base so it stays behind and clear of the upper swivel. The boat I had copied was a later model and had a longer crane that put his halyard a couple of inches further forward than on my boat.
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