Roller furling line improvement

[mstern]

I am unduly proud of an improvement I made to my Oday 23. I have been frustrated with my roller furling line set up since I installed it 10 years ago. The furling line would interfere with the jib sheet, and it was always a pain to tie off the end to the small cleat I had installed on the edge of the starboard coaming. I was on someone else's boat a couple of years ago, and I saw that they used a swivel cam cleat to control the end of their furling line. I thought that was a great idea: you could stand or sit anywhere and snap the line in and out of the cams. One hand operation, with no more awkward intereference with the jib sheets or leaning over the coaming. And, I already had a swivel cam cleat sitting in my basement gathering dust! It had been a gift to me to use as an upgrade for the mainsheet control on my Sunfish. Well, I sold the Sunny before getting around to installing the thing, so it was still available.

I thought about how to install the swivel, including a deck and coaming mounting. In the end, I decided the best and easiest thing to do would be to mount in on a board, then attach the board to a stantion. No holes in the deck or boat, and its out of way without being inconvenient.

A piece of scrap shelving gets cut to size and coated with epoxy, the swivel attached via stainless screws and some 4200, and then mounted to the stantion, reusing the hardware from the stantion block it replaced. I tried it out last night, and I couldn't be happier with the results.

[sd1953]

That looks great, clever answer to your problem. You might think about a clamp above the cam as well as the one below. Two clamps around the stanchion will prevent twisting forces on the block of wood the cam is mounted on. But otherwise, good job!

[captainrizzo]

You should be proud! Nice work!

[mstern]

Thanks! Good idea about the second clamp. I just have to find one...

[Faster]

I'd also round the corners off.... hard plywood corners can leave scars!! In fact the plywood bases could be considerably smaller overall. A more durable plan might be to make the same thing out of Starboard.. no eventual rot or moisture issues.

Clever, though.. well done.

[JimsCAL]

I would also second the suggestion to replace the plywood down the road with Starboard (or a solid piece of teak). With the plys exposed to the weather like that, its going to be an issue at some point. And the epoxy coating will not last without some UV protection (like varnish).

I would also suggest some sort of way to better secure the furling line when leaving the boat. If the line pops out in strong winds while you are away, the sail will unroll and be severely damaged. I've seen that happen a number of times in our fleet.

[mstern]

Thank you (sincerely) for all of the suggestions. Now that the project is completed, I can see lots of room for improvement, including that additional clamp, making the board smaller, using different material, etc. I now choose to look at this as a "proof of concept"

Any improvements are likely to wait until the off-season, as I would like to live with it awhile and see what other great ideas come to me.