Choosing a headsail furler
My 1987 Cabo Rico 38 has an Isomat mast. As such, the masthead wire fittings are stemballs. Since a stemball headstay fitting necessitates using a stemball eye to toggles to permit enough headstay articulation for a furler, this results in the top of the foil being a little lower than a mast with a standard headstay with no stemball. What this boils down to is that I'm having trouble deciding on the best option for a roller furler unit. The local rigger likes (and likes to sell) Harken. From what I've read, unless I can maintain 7-10 degrees halyard to headstay angle, I'll likely have wrap issues (from Harken's manual). Schaefer allows parallel but would rather a small angle. Is a halyard restrainer my only option? My general feeling is that a restrainer is not optimal. Which leads to my final option. I could "deal with" and address the other issues of a Profurl in order to gain the benefits of their anti-wrap thing-a-ka-bob. Does it actually work? Or am I better off with a halyard restrainer on a Harken or Schaefer? On a related subject, if I were to go with Harken, on a heavy cruiser am I better off with a MK-IV or a Cruising unit? And now it looks like Harken is discontinuing the Cruising Unit and replacing it with the ESP, which just looks really cheap and of cheesy plastic.
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