With the Reflex's quick release system, all that Harken had to do was create a tack plate fitting that could be sewn into the tack of the cableless sail. The pros and cons of cableless code zeros are beyond the scope of this article but suffice it to say, there is an increasing trend in this direction with more and more sailmakers introducing this technology into their sail wardrobe recommendations. Big names like Doyle and North sails were working at "cableless" sails to remove the need for a torsional cable completely. So simple!Ī year or so after the launch of the Reflex furler, another significant development started to emerge in code zero furling. To address this problem and create flexibility/redundancy in their design, Harken introduced furling units with a quick release fitting and a variety of attachments to allow one drum to fulfil multiple applications. Harken could also see the increasingly popular trend towards the use of top-down tack swivels. Cable sizes are very different between bottom-up and top-down which requires very different jaw widths in the furler which can cause issues with drum versus cable compatibility. More established manufacturers had been through a transition from dedicated bottom-up drums and then the introduction of top-down furling. Having come relatively late to continuous line furlers, Harken had the advantage of observing the changing trends in the market. They certainly achieved an extremely torsionally stiff cable but, as with all things, there was a price to pay, which was increased cable weight versus alternative solutions on the market. They achieved this by braiding stainless steel wire over a Dyneema® core. To combat this, Harken developed a torsional cable that would immediately deliver torque through the cable to the head swivel. A lack of torsional stiffness can lead to "corkscrewing" in the cable which can result in partial or uneven furling and creates a lag in furling speed. The first opportunity they saw was to improve torsional cable performance. They came up with two key points of difference: so time will tell when we get it in a little more Breeze.When Harken joined the continuous line furler market, they wanted to bring their own innovations to the table, to create something unique compared to the competition. So far as I can see Harken has solve the torque rope twisting problem. We found by adding a short Dynemma sheet to the sail we could leave this line around the sail while bagging and this holds the sail wrapped when you remove the spinnaker sheets. Very easy to lay down on the deck and re hoist. It does tend to hockle/ kink sometimes if not helped out of the bag. The sail fits in half the bag and it is very easy to fold the sail into the bag. Furled very well even with the torque rope a little loose, the sail furls a little tighter if the torque is tight but does not need to be as tight as the Facnor. the larger A2 is the sail we had a lot of trouble unfurling when it was on the Facnor furler and always got twisted up on the inside and would not unfurl properly. We tested it with two different sails and they both furled and unfurled without a problem. Sailed with the new Harken Reflex furler over the weekend and it works great. You can see that once they finish the furl, the torque on the torsion rope is released and it spins back to 0 torque inside the furled sail. Now we always untorque the rope after every furl, and especially before dropping the sail as the second you take the tension off the torsion rope, it will twist up into many pretzels, potentially preventing it from even being hoisted again until you completely fix the mess. If we didn't untorque the torsion rope, when unfurling, the torsion rope would untwist rapidly, sucking up the bottom of the sail in the opposite twist, resulting in a sail that was impossible to deploy until you dropped it and manually undid the furls (an arduous process). Once we started doing that, the process of furling and unfurling became very straightforward. On our furler, this required unlocking the furler so that it would twist back and then letting it untwist inside the sail or manually untwisting it until we felt there was no torque on the torsion rope. I've experienced the same behavior on a top down furler until we realized that once you furl the sail up, you have to untorque the torsion rope inside the furled sail to remove all the loaded up twist.
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