[Rhodes22-list] Roller Furler on 1984 R22

[Mary Lou Troy]

At 01:19 PM 10/17/2012, you wrote:
>  BTW would you
>recommend a 175% or 150% overlap?

I think it depends a lot on where you will be sailing, how you sail 
and your tolerance for the poorer sail shape you get when a 175 is 
furled significantly.

The 175 is absolutely the right sail for the boat if you are going to 
be doing most of your sailing in 5 to 10 knot winds. If you will be 
dealing with higher winds a large part of the time the smaller sail 
is probably better. Note that if you sail with the 175 genoa furled 
most of the time, you'll develop a baggy pocket in the middle of the sail.

If you do a lot of light air sailing in chop created by other boats, 
the large sail will collapse under the weight of the sunbrella strip. 
When we had Sailcare replace the luff on our 175 sail for the new 
furler, we also had them repair some worn stitching and replace the 
Sunbrella cover with a UV treated Dacron. They said it would not last 
as long but we were already 6 or 7 years into the sail and wanted the 
lighter weight. It does work a lot better in light air. We also 
bought a Doyle UPS (furling drifter) sail a few years back and that 
is a lot of fun to play with in light air up to 8 knots upwind and a 
bit more off the wind. You can't point as high with it as you would 
with a regular genoa.

We sail the Chesapeake mostly in moderate to light winds. About the 
time we went to the Schaefer Snap-Furl furler, we were thinking about 
having a 135 for the brisker winds in spring and fall and using the 
175 or the UPS the rest of the time. We also thought about going to a 
150 but then we'd get a perfect day for the 175 and think we didn't 
want to give that up. We haven't been sailing much lately so we've 
never actually put any of these thoughts into action.

Best,
Mary Lou
1991 R22 Fretless
Rock Hall, MD