"Capt. JG" wrote in message
easolutions...
"pirate" wrote in message
...
FWIW. my boat had in mast furling when I bought it. It took a while
to become accustomed to it, but it works. If I had my druthers I
would have a furl boom system. I found that you only furl and unfurl
on a starboard tack . A real pain if the wind is off the port. We can
furl, unfurl,and reef from the cockpit and I do like that. You give
up a battened main. The boom furl has none of the aforementioned
drawbacks and the weight aloft is also less.


I've only sailed on one boat with boom furling... must agree. I like it a
lot better, and if you need to drop the sail, you can still do it if the
furler fails. It does increase windage, due to boom size, but perhaps
that's not that big of a deal.

Strange about starboard vs. port. That wasn't true for us last time, as we
had equally as difficult a time on both tacks, high though they were.

I had a 34' boat with boom furling for about 14 years. The roll was achieved
with a worm gear which allowed you to stop anywhere without it running back.
The control was on the starboard side which makes sense especially if you
are shorthanded because you have right of way against anyone on port tack
and thus more likely to finish the reefing without having to run back to the
helm. The disadvantage was that after rolling the equivalent of a couple of
reefs the end of the boom had come down so it was almost brushing the top of
the spray dodger.
However this effect can be minimised by adding padding either to the sail
itself or affixed to the boom