Thursday, October 12, 2017

Furler won't

Fixing our Harken Furler

Ok, so I didn't read the manual on the Harken Furler that came installed on Eximius, my Bad (sorry)

When we put the Jib sail back on the furler after Hurricane Irma passed, I noticed that the lower plate of the furler was broken. If I had read the manual, I would have learned that there should be at least two turns on the furler drum. The reason - because if there are less, it will cause the strain on the furling line to go more directly to the lower furler flange plate and can cause it to fail (there's a big warning in the Furler Installation Manual... Duh!)





The pic shows the broken tab that joins the two halves of the lower flange plate. The consequence of that failure is that the drum is not securely attached to the flange and thus it can rotate - in use that would mean that the sail could possibly unfurl from a reefed position. That would not be fun. So, I called Harken after finding the part that was broken online. They impressed me at the outset - a Human answered the phone. I actually said "Wow, a Human - Thank you!" no press 1 for Sales, press 2 for something else all the way through press 99 to go back to the beginning, a Real Human!

Not only did a really nice person ask about why I was calling but the quickly passed me on to the guy that handled that particular furler (and probably others, but he seemed to know the product very well.) I described the problem, he explained that it can happen if there are less than 2 turns on the furler drum and they have the part in stock. Within just a couple of minutes I had spoken with Kim and placed the order.

The new Flange Plate pair arrived today. I have researched the replacement process and there's no need to drop the jib. I'll take pics of the process when I do the replacement on Wednesday (assuming the weather is nice, not a comfortable position to sit in the rain.)

Wednesday - replacement day
Well, that went well. The Cover plates were easy to remove (just two hex screws on the underside). I tied a line through the 'Line' openings in the cover plates to prevent them falling overboard. Once the cover plates were off, the lower flange plates easily pulled out, both had fractured tabs. I installed the new flange plates, had to use a stubby bit adapter to tighten the small hex screws, but they don't need to be overtightened, they screw into metal inserts in the tabs. Then I cleaned up the cover and bolts and reinstalled them. Finally fed the line through the 'Line' opening in the cover, 6 times around the drum, down through the hole in the flange plate out of the gap on the underside, tied a new stop knot and took up the slack. Neatly laid the line around the drum nice and tight, secured the furling back at the cockpit. All Done.

Total time was about 20 minutes.

Cross that one off the list.

Won't be out on the water for a few days, grotty weather and Peggy has pinched a nerve in her wrist, so need to babysit wrist for a few days.

Next week looks good, so see you out there.

Paul


1 comment:

  1. Thank you for sharing your experience. It was very helpful.

    ReplyDelete

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