Lessons Learned
Yep, It’s Broken!
Many lessons to learn on the Good Karma.
On this day we went out to sail a bit and found the furling line for the mainsail broken. So, what does that mean? On most boats of this class, the main sail folds down into a bed-like structure on the boom. You raise it up from there, and lower down and cover it up when not in use. On the Good Karma, we have a boom furling system, meaning the mainsail rolls out of and back into the boom. The difference is that we need a furling line, one that pulls the rollers to roll the sail on the boom furler spool.
Another feature we have is a power winch. Winches are used to give you mechanical assistance for hauling lines and most of them are manual, meaning you crank them by hand. The mainsail on our boat has a powered winch which can produce a lot of torque and break things if you aren’t careful. Thus the broken furling line I’m holding above.
The line was made of Spectra, extremely strong material (they make bullet-proof vests out of this stuff). It broke when I was furling the mainsail and to be honest, there was little warning. We think the line was frayed, it did show signs of wear, being fuzzy in places. We found that it was about 4 years old, plenty of time to weaken in this harsh environment.
This was easy to replace. Also, it wouldn’t have been a problem even if we were out in the ocean as we would have just dropped the sail to the mast anyway.
But… Good to get some of these lessons done while we’re a place with expertise and convenience to fix “mistakes.”
Posted in Sailing by Mark with comments disabled.