For some time now the in-mast furling on “Conspiracy” my Oceanranger has been difficult to set and I’ve had to use the winch to pull out the sail. As far as I’m aware it’s the original Seldon Furlin’ System installed in the mast when Conspiracy was new in 1994 and in the 11 years I’ve owned her, apart from a winter squirt with PTFE grease it has never really had a proper servicing. Near the end of this last season, I tried tightening the foil as per Seldon’s instructions. (See Seldon’s “Manual for Furling Mast Type RB MkII/RC MkII”). But it didn’t tighten! Just screwed right down the screw thread until there was nothing left to adjust indicating something was seriously wrong.
This autumn when the mast came down, I asked the yard to leave it out and I gave it a good examination. To my absolute horror after shining a torch down the luff slot in the mast there was nothing connecting the head of the sail to the mast head plate. The whole mainsail foil was just floating with all the weight and rotation being taken by the bottom bearings. Anticipating this was going to be extremely expensive I decided to investigate further.
The first job was to remove the masthead plate and as this hadn’t been removed for nearly 30 years, I was expecting it to be difficult but it wasn’t. Just unscrew the 4 top nuts and the plate easily lifts off. It’s attached to the mast body by angled bolts (fig 1) and providing you’ve slackened off/ removed all the halyards etc. and fed in a bit of slack for your various masthead cables it’s simple.
I’d already removed all the mast ropes and this made working at the masthead a lot easier. Off came the plate and the top bearing for the foil came away as well (fig 2 and 2a) with the remains of the foil section still pop-rivetted to it.
I then unscrewed the bottom end of the foil from the lower bearing section by delving into the mast slots near the boom (fig 3) which allowed me to pull the foil up through the masthead and it revealed a chewed-up mess (fig 4).
I stopped here to think about what I was going to do. The grey bit on the foil is only a plastic cover and only 20mm of foil was chewed so if I cut away 20 mm of plastic and cut away the damaged section there’s possibly enough tolerance at the bottom end to still be able to marry the bottom bearing to the lower end of the foil. The foil is only pop rivetted to the upper bearing and a single lower pop rivet there to arrest the halyard swivel from going too far up the foil and fouling the upper bearing. So this was turning out to be easily repairable and that’s what I did (fig 5 and fig 6). In fig 6, note the split washer retaining the upper bearing axle pin to the mast plate.
I took the opportunity to replace the mast- head bearing balls whilst I was at it and found 2 balls missing. I gave the new balls a good greasing to hold them in place whilst refitting. Care must be taken here as push- ing the foil back down the mast slot can (and does) push off the bearing top cover which then releases these balls to escape, which they do, very easily. Especially if you’re doing it on the horizontal as I was. Putting it all back was not so easy as you have to line up the 4 masthead bolts to the plate holes, make sure the electric cables aren’t getting trapped, ease the foil back inside without spilling the ball bearings, and then line up the bottom bearing and screw it into the foil….which in my case it didn’t! When it was all bedded down the two ends only just touched!
I got a friend to make up a barrel screw extension for me(fig7–compare with fig 3) but fitting that was a challenge as the whole of the bottom bearing unit had to come out (Fig 8) and access to its fixing was only possible through the 2 small keyhole slots next to the furling drum (Fig 9).
You have to remove a split pin below and a bolt above the plastic disc (which is very fiddley) and then, slide off the plastic disc/bearing and juggle the shaft and bearing out through the bigger slots further up the mast. Refitting the shaft and bearing is easy enough until you get to replacing the split pin and screw. The screw drops in from above but you have to turn the shaft so that the split pin goes in horizontally, and then hold it in position whilst you split it. Not difficult, just awkward! Once all back together I lightly tensioned the foil to lift it away from the inside of the mast.
Now, I’m awaiting Spring to see how well it performs; no further news will mean good news!
In case you’re wondering why I didn’t remove the furling drum assembly at the foot of the sail to do a thorough servicing: all the screwheads on my boat are chewed to bits and are impossible to undo so I’m leaving that for another day.