Harken Reflex

Ben Meakins puts Harken’s top-down furling system through its paces on a windy test sail in a J105

Furling systems for offwind sails started life on offshore racing boats – Open 60s and the like – but have begun to filter down to cruising boats in the past few years. They won’t work with symmetrical spinnakers, but for asymmetric spinnakers, cruising chutes and code zero sails, they make hoisting, gybing and dropping the sail much easier, especially short-handed.

Unlike a genoa roller-furler, spinnaker furlers don’t have a fixed luff. Instead, they use a torsion cable to transfer the twist from the bottom to the top of the furler. The head and tack are fixed to a swivel at each end of the cable, but the luff is free – and you can adjust the luff tension with a lashing from the tack to the lower swivel. By pulling on an endless retrieval line, you start the cable turning, which rolls the sail from the top. The tack is attached to a swivel at the bottom which doesn’t turn with the furling drum, thus allowing the sail to furl from the top down – which reduces area high up first, bringing the sail under control.

The advantage of a top-down furler is that, unlike a snuffer, they are low-profile, low-windage and much more compact, and you end up with a long snake of sail that can be easily coiled up and stowed down below. This makes hoisting and dropping short-handed much safer and easier – and you can do it from the cockpit. Gybing can also be made easier by partially or fully furling the sail before the gybe to keep it forward of the forestay.

How it works

Harken say that much of the time spent developing the system was spent in making the torsion cable (which acts as the drive shaft) as efficient as possible in transferring the load from the lower drum to the top of the sail with minimal twisting, while remaining as flexible as possible. Their solution is braided polyester, covered with braided stainless steel and covered by a smooth polymer cable jacket.

At the lower end is the drive unit, which uses an endless furling line held in a notched sheave similar to a ratchet block. The torsion cable has a T-shaped slot attachment which locks into a quick-release bracket, making it easy to remove. The idea is that multiple sails have their own torsion cable ready-attached, and you simply slot the relevant sail’s cable into the drive unit.

The unit is attached to the bow fitting or pole with a snapshackle, lashing or soft shackle. There are two sizes: a 1.5T MWL (maximum working load) model suitable for boats to 11m (36ft), and a 2.5T MWL unit for boats to 14m (46ft). n For your chance to win a Harken Reflex, go to www.pbo.co.uk/harken Price: From £1,229.83 extra cable: £25.93/m www.harken.co.uk