Poll: Camber Spar or Roller Furling?

Boat Systems
1

Do you have a camber spar or roller furling?

  • Camber spar
  • Roller Furling
  • None
0 voters

The question about how to mount a jib on a camber spar got me wondering, what do people have? So, here’s a poll regarding that.

– Geoff

2

I have an 1996 F35, Pedrick design with roller furling. My only complaint with the self tending roller furl is sail set. The clew is too far inboard when close hauled and the sail is dificult to keep flying when wing on wing. However that said, the sail is easly furled from the cockpit and there is no clutter on the fore deck. For the non racing kind of sailing I do I would select the roller furl again.

3

My question is how does it affect pointing? Does a Freedom sloop with a roller furled foresail point better than the same boat with the typical 2/3 camber spar? And how far up on the mast is the furling attached?

  • Rees
4

It is attached at the same height as the camberspar sail. I haven’t done any side by side comparison but I would expect the camberspar to point a bit better.

I would attribute this to the better sheeting angle provided by the clew being able to be set to any angle. With a roller furl the jib sheet runs to a traveler car on the cabin top which is limited as to how far outboard it can go. I have seen some metal bracing added to allow the travler to go out beyond the cabin top but it looks like a real knee knocker set up to me.

Also the camberspar adds tension to the forestay as it is sheeted in. For a roller furl it is only the mainsail pulling the mast aft that adds tension to the fore stay. I know that race boats maintain very high fore stay tension allowing for a small luff curve in the sail which in turn provides for higher pointing. I don’t know how big the difference would be between two well cut sails that have the proper luff curve for the respective fore stay tension.

5

I used to deliver Freedoms to boat shows. The first time that I sailed a 40/40 with a non-camberspar jib, non-overlapping jib, I formed a really negative opinion of it. It was fairly good hard on the wind, but the moment you cracked off, you might as well have rolled it up. It was virtually useless off the wind. conversely, a camber spar jib projects the area of a much larger conventional genoa when sailing off the wind. In anything over 10 knots apparent, it automatically flops itself out on the upwind side and sits stably wing-on-wing for hours.

It is pretty easy to rig a down-haul for the jib which eliminates the foredeck work until you are settled at anchor.

Anyone ever seen a carbon spar in a camber spar?