Headsail furlers. Are they needed for cruising?

I respect Chris249 opinions on here a great deal. He is clearly very experienced and very sensible.
On this one though I think he has missed the point. Crewing on a reasonable size race boat with experienced and current sailors sail changes are often like clockwork.
On a 25-34 ft yacht in heavy seas and high winds the foredeck is a dangerous place to be. Anywhere outside a deep cockpit is not fun.
Hove to or lying ahull in steep breaking seas means 45 degree rolls and heavy water over the deck. Dropping the heady, scrambling forward to haul down a sail with a wild mind of its own, finding the halyard has jammed, returning to the cockpit, scrambling forward again. Get the sail off and take it back down below. Drag another sail up forard. In pitch black. Hank it on or try to get the luff rope in the groove. Tie the sheets on. Get back to the cockpit. Even with a downhaul on the luff you have only avoided a small part of the evolution.
Or luff up and wind in a few turns. Retrim and go back to bed.
What I do on a Lyons 54 or Swarbrick S111 I avoid like the plague on MB.

Coming down the west coast on our delivery, a reefed/furled 110% headsail was pretty crap when trying to make decent headway in 25-30+. Setting the storm jib (only other sail choice) proved way more successful in getting a good sail trim that gave enough drive against the swell but not too much pounding or overpower.

Ideally we will likely go 3 headsails for races/performance but keep the furler for everyday cruising use or when we couldn't be bothered changing sails.

We have a furlex 300, which is easy to drop the swivel and then use it as a racing foil for different sails.

With the thoughts on going forward i really don't see how you totally avoid it. Given most of you would hardly ever carry a spinnaker while cruising you don't need to go for that but what about poling out the headsail?

This is a classic topic with everybody's opinions based on their personal experience.

My personal experience of a jammed furler and the jib violently shaking the the forestay and the boat as the wind howled, put me off them. But then it was a simple trailer-sailer furler, not a reefer, and the type where the halliard is trapped under the furled sail.

Assuming a perfect reefer type, with an external halliard, if it is say on a 110 or 120% jib, the cloth for efficiency should be selected for the wind strength for that size jib. Then when reefed, the wind strength is likely to be damaging to the sail. So you have to select a heavier cloth, which may not work as well in light winds. Then also, when working with a deep reef, the leading edge big luff roll is not going to be efficient.

Of course, the cutter rigged system with a heavier smaller sail on the inner forestay is the ideal system. However, the mast and hull needs to be set up for a cutter rig, and it is not easy to convert to cutter rig from a standard sloop.

So I am thinking, maybe the best solution would be to also have say, a heavier circa 80% jib to change to, which will be more efficient in heavy weather when you need that fore sail furled to say a 50% jib.

With hanks you can lower the jib and it is still controlled at the luff while you fold or roll it up, and bag.
Changing a sail in a furler track IMHO is more difficult, as you cannot bag the sail until it is fully out of the track. Enter those clever New Zealanders, who have a thing called the Kiwi slide. reefrite-na.com/kiwi-slides/kiwi-slide-details/ So now you can still have the furler, but also the advantages of a hanked-on sail.

I love the speed of a furler in reducing sail. Our headsail is 50m2, and you bear off to anywhere near 120 and it takes seconds to furl. I never reef furl, its either out or in.

To change down gears and still create drive, we attach the inner forestay, which uses hanked sails. This gives me flexibility in sail size, ie: you could pick on a class boat like etchells where there is a lot of 2nd hand sails on the market.
Thinking out loud here.... our inner forestay is dyneema, it is hard fixed on the mast and tensioned from the deck. To my simple brain, it appears to be something that would be easy to retrofit to a yacht without a inner forestay? You could run the halyard external through a low friction ring (lashed to the same hardpoint) if you didn't want to enter the mast on a 25'ter.

I understand it wouldn't suit all boats, but it seems like such a force multiplier it might be worth considering? Best of both worlds?

Edit: you can see the headsail furler in the background after we finished fitting it onto the forestay.
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I had a furler on my cat, but when really windy it sailed like a dog with the all but rolled up jib

I tried once to slide on a storm jib in a storm up the foil by myself, things got bad...

so it was hanks for me

also to sail with a rolled up jib you'll need very different sheeting points, this needs consideration and $$

Hi Seabird,
That would make a really good number 2.5 headsail on a Sonata 26/8/760 as well.
Paging Selkie....deal in aisle 3 from Seabird....

Ok...

With respect (as noted earlier) to those with different views and experiences, it doesn't seem that foredeck work is or should be that dangerous. Yes, some people have had trouble. My sympathies to LMY but I don't know the circs. The guy in the vid from NZ seemed to be being very casual and it's obvious that the casual way one behaves while messing around before a pre-start in the harbour is not the way one behaves offshore. If you're going to be that careless then you're just as likely to get smacked in the head by the boom if you stay in the cockpit.......

I was going to ask whether anyone has heard of any fatalities through going off a foredeck, but that seemed macabre. However, I don't think I've ever heard of such a case and based on that and years of practise, it seems that it's not actually dangerous. Yes, incidents can happen but people die in the bath or by falling off dinner chairs too. If going onto a foredeck has not resulted in deaths that we can recall it does not seem to be "dangerous" by most definitions. My dad (a champion in a couple of classes) was killed having a social race inshore, as have quite a few others - are inshore social races "dangerous"?

Surely foredeck work is like many other things - the danger is related to how practised one is. If you've spent lots of time practising headsail changes then it's not difficult or dangerous. You automatically sit down when you should, you have the boat set up so you can take the halyard to the bow and feed it down as you drop the sail, you have your jacklines and double harness straps, and most of all you've just practised. And personally, I think it's fun!

As an analogy, try sailing a Laser fast around a short course in 20 knots of breeze. Even experienced sailors who have never sailed a Laser or dinghy will normally capsize and may say it's dangerous, but a trained Laser sailor will just go fast and have fun. Hell, look at backwards walkovers - if I tried to do one I'd say it's dangerous 'cause I'd fall on my bald patch slightly thinning skull, but my daughter was doing them in gym all the time.

Whether any person reckons the possibility of getting wet from the spray up front is worth it is a personal issue. For me it is, 'cause I prefer the feeling of the boat when it's sailing well. As others have noted, roller furlers aren't normally all that quick. They tend to have inherent sheeting angle problems unless you go forward anyway. My first boat was as fast as a Top Hat and I really wanted to get it going as fast as possible, because it's a long way between ports when your average speed is pretty low. A long punch upwind with a poorly set furling headsail would be a painful experience IMHO, but that's just me.

The question was not "what is the ideal setup" but are furling headsails NEEDED for cruising. They're not, as proven by the number of people who have cruised without them.

I'm not having a go at anyone, just pointing out that it's very much a personal choice based on a huge variety of factors. I can completely understand those who love their furlers and feel they are invaluable.


PS - MB, I know you know your stuff. I might just say that for the last few years all of my coastal passages (which have all been pretty short) have all been either singlehanded or doublehanded. The last year I did serious offshore stuff, there were only five or six of us, so it's not a case of having 10 guys all ready to go. In many ways smaller boats are probably easier for foredeck work - you're highly unlikely to get blown over the side by a headsail on a 28 footer, for example.