A nice calm morning yesterday, so we dropped the jib and packed it up to deliver to the sailmaker for some TLC. Then I decided to finally do something about the knackered bearings in the lower furler unit - we were really having to resort to using winches to furl the jib this last season, so really overdue to fix it.
Removing the lower unit without dropping the forestay was going to be either reasonably simple, or a nightmare. Fortunately, it was the former. I lashed the jib halyard off on the foil, removed the retaining screws that attach the foil to the drum unit, and then cranked the halyard to withdraw the foil from the drum and hold it in place. A good reason to always leave sufficient clear space at the top of the forestay.
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| Foil extracted from furler unit. |
We then unbolted the support bars for the drum unit, tied a restraining line onto the forestay and unwound the forestay turnbuckle. I could then slide the drum unit off the bottom of the forestay, no problems. Quite remarkable really, usually you expect these things to turn into a total s**tfight.
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| Drum unit removed. |
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| Bearing seal on the upper end looks well stuffed. Water and dirt will have got in and trashed the bearing. |
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| Inner seal looks OK, but will do both ends in any case. |
I'll take it part this week. I really hope it goes well - while bearings and seals are standard off the shelf items (in theory), all other parts are largely no longer available. Don't break anything, James.
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