Ep 131 Is This a Good Idea? DIY Headstay and Furler Swap

The flip side of our rough and rather frightening passage down from Bermuda, in which we nearly lost the rig and my own life a couple of times, was the purchase and install of a new Harken MkIV-Mod3 Ocean Series furler. As part of this upgrade, we replaced the headstay as well. In truth, this was necessary as the old one was captive to the original furler, but to keep the headstay when doing a project this intense would have been foolish and incredibly shortsighted.

People have asked why we hadn’t replaced it earlier, and the answer there was twofold. First, the old one, while finicky, had worked well enough over the years. It was just very difficult to get the halyard tension just right, and when it wasn’t right the swivel tended to ratchet instead of glide. And then all of a sudden it wasn’t just ratcheting, it was locked tight. With the huge 145% genoa fully deployed at sea!

So $7,000 later, new furler. But being the “glass half full” people that we are, we view it as one less purchase needed for our planned late 2022 standing rigging upgrade.

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