We had one seriously bent join between extrusion sections, plus a number of extrusions had become flared at their ends, swelling out in one dimension by about 0.5mm. This was enough to jam up the bushes in the swivel unit and stop it from coming down.
We have completely dissassembled the furler and checked each and every component. The good news is that there is almost no fizzing of the aluminium parts and overall it seems in sound condition. The problems seem to be a combination of residual deformation from a screw-up made in the USA when the mast was pulled that resulted in damage to the top of the forestay and furler unit, and me sailing on the wind too bloody hard with a heavily furled jib.
The damage in the USA was repaired before I got there, but now upon careful inspection I can see that one of the joiners was bent out of shape, and the head of the furler had not been reassembled properly. It seems heavy loading on the foil without even luff pressure due to our jib not being flat enough to properly set when heavily reefed has also caused point loading that has further deformed the fittings - indicated by the fact that all the worst of it is located right where the head of the sail generally sits when we reef in heavy weather. Live and learn.
The good news is that Kamalii came with a spare section of extrusion that I can use to replace the damaged one, and it appears the only parts I have to buy are a replacement joiner/bearing holder and the bearing retainer for the head.
Since we have it all down and apart I will also fit a new forestay - the existing one definitely appears to be a lot older than I was lead to believe, plus they cut it 100mm too short when they repaired it previously, adding in an extra toggle at the stem to compensate. So, more time, no sailing... but better safe than sorry.
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| If you look carefully at the far end you can see the sharp kink in the foil from the bent joiner. |
